


Transitions Book 2

by lisajames85



Category: Stingers (1998)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 20:42:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 97,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7985524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisajames85/pseuds/lisajames85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A continuation of Transitions Book 1. After the closure of the undercover unit, Angie, Oscar, Danni, Mac and Pete have gone their own way, but with one final unsolved case hanging over their heads, none can go far, with answers potentially much closer than any of them realise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

ONE

Danni Mayo was pleased to be off duty for the weekend. Instead of spending the Saturday afternoon at police headquarters in the city, the newly qualified Homicide Detective was in the country, braiding little white and pink flowers into the loosely curled hair of her friend, the former Senior Constable, Angie Piper. 

“That is looking beautiful Danni,” Shirley Pierce said, Angie’s soon-to-be mother-in-law. She was sitting on an upholstered armchair in the bedroom that Angie shared with the man she was about to marry, just one room in the quaint family farmhouse that Shirley also lived in, which was currently in upheaval, mid-renovation. 

“Thanks,” Danni said. “I’ve been practising on little girls’ hair for weeks.”

“Do you come across many little girls as a Homicide Detective?” Shirley asked, curiously bemused by the comment. Shirley’s own hair was simply combed and tucked behind her ears, her fading blonde hair now the colour of light straw. She was wearing a light blue top, black dress pants, a black shawl, and a deeper blue scarf. Outside it was sunny, but the early spring evening air still carried a chill. 

“Danni’s dating her Inspector,” Angie said as she took a deep breath in her seat. She was dressed and ready to get married, as terrifying as that thought was. Her white dress was relatively informal. The skirt was loose and light, and stopped at a carefree ankle-length. The bodice was just as simple, it was sleeveless, with thin straps over her shoulders and a belt of thick, white ribbon that tied around her waist and draped over a hip of her choosing. Danni had loosely curled her blonde hair. It would be left out, but for Danni’s nimble fingers that were drawing strands from each side back into two flowered braids that would become one loose braid at the back of her head. 

“I am not dating my Inspector,” Danni told her with a wary smirk. “We are very good friends.” She turned to look back at Shirley and smiled more genuinely. “Neil has a daughter, she’s eight years old, and he volunteered her to be my practice model. I drop by each morning and do her hair for school, and it is one less thing he has to worry about. She loves it. The nanny can’t do braiding, it seems!”

“I bet she adores you, Danni. You’re very good,” Shirley said. “I love my boys, but a part of me always did wish I had a little girl’s hair to braid. I haven’t done it since I was a little girl myself, playing with dolls.”

“Well now you have Angie,” Danni said. “I’m sure she could be persuaded to sit for you, if the two of you actually give yourself an afternoon off of all the work you’ve been doing on the house and the property.”

“Oh, there will be plenty of afternoons off!” Shirley assured her with a wise chuckle. Danni raised her eyebrows at the older woman, but was distracted by Angie’s hand, which had fallen on Danni’s, atop Angie’s right shoulder. Angie turned her head slightly to look back and up at her old colleague and friend. 

“I’m pregnant,” she said with a soft smile. 

“What?” Danni asked on a breath as her mouth dropped open. “Really?”

“It’s very early, but yes,” Angie said as her eyes filled with tears. “We weren’t trying yet, exactly, but I was off the Pill in preparation and it just happened. It’s sooner than planned but it’s what we both want. I’m seven and a half weeks, we only found out a week ago, and we haven’t told anyone yet, but we saw the heartbeat on Thursday and so far everything looks really promising so…yeah. Do you want to be an aunty?”

“Oh Angie, yes, that’s wonderful!” Danni said as she leant down and hugged Angie tightly from behind. Angie wrapped her arms around Danni and chuckled, nodding shyly. “I promise I won’t say a word,” Danni continued happily, before picking up her braiding once more. A few flowers had fallen out during the conversation but she quickly repaired that. “How does Cam feel about it?” she asked, referring to the groom who was nervously waiting somewhere outside with his country mates. 

Senior Constable Oscar Stone, as Danni had known him just three months ago, no longer existed. The ex-undercover operative from the city had returned home after their unit’s closure and the sudden death of his father. He had abandoned the alias he had used to provide his family with added security and returned to the name under which he had been admitted to the police at the age of nineteen, Cameron Pierce. 

Cam was now stationed out of the nearest regional station and worked as a country cop, while also helping Angie and Shirley, who had dedicated themselves to the long list of home and property repairs. Angie was officially on leave for another two weeks, but Danni knew she was unlikely to return. In addition to Shirley needing help to run the cattle property on her own, Angie and Cam wanted more than one child. 

They had only been together for the past three months, spurred into action by their growing desire to each have a family, and the restructure of the police force that would otherwise have forced them apart and possibly ended their daily contact with one another. Their romantic relationship was brand new, fresh out of the box, but their nine years of friendship in the confined space of Covert Services provided a solid foundation, and they both seemed happier than Danni had ever seen them. In three months they had changed their whole lives. They weren’t the only ones. 

“Cameron is ecstatic,” Angie was saying. “I keep telling him to calm down, not to get his hopes up yet, just in case, but I wanted to tell you all. Are Mac and Pete here yet?”

“I don’t know, I’ve been in here with you for the last two hours,” Danni said. 

“I’ll check,” Shirley offered. She stood and brushed her hands down her pants. “What do they look like?”

“Mac has dark brown hair, blue eyes,” Angie said. “Very blue. And she’s thin. Pete’s got lighter brown hair, going grey, he’s got light blue eyes, stocky torso…just look for two people who also hold themselves like they’ve been cops for twenty-odd years.”

“They’re the same height as me,” Danni added. “And if Peter’s wearing a full suit, he’ll look like a hit-man.” Shirley laughed as she left, but Danni smirked and leant over Angie’s shoulder to mumble, “She thinks I’m joking”.

“Mm,” Angie said, before both of them giggled. “Oh Danni, I’m really nervous!”

“You’ll be fine,” Danni assured her as she put the finishing touches on Angie’s hair and then squeezed her shoulders. “You look beautiful, Ange, and you and Cam are a good match. You will be wonderful parents, and I know you love each other.”

“He’s my best friend,” Angie confirmed on a choked whisper as she nodded. “Mac and Pete are coming though, right? They have a room booked in town, same as you.”

“Yes. They said they would be here,” Danni assured her as she shook a can of hair spray and sealed Angie’s hair in place. “They flew back from Tasmania yesterday.”

“Tasmania? I knew about the Northern Territory and Queensland. Tasmania too?”

“Yes, and they still haven’t maxed out their long service leave,” Danni said with a chuckle as she sat on the bed in her dress and Angie turned around slightly so that they could talk face to face finally. “You haven’t heard from them?” Danni asked. 

“I’ve heard from Peter, not Mac.”

“She’s been keeping a low profile,” Danni said. “She’s not using email or her phone.”

“Is she okay?” Angie asked hopefully, with worried eyes. “No one’s been following them? No one’s tried to hurt her again? They’re safe?”

“For the time being, yes,” Danni said. “Mac needed space, she put a self-imposed ban on phones and email. I haven’t spoken to her either, actually, just Peter.”

“Oh, okay,” Angie said as she breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t just her being shut out, then. One of the last things Angie had said to her boss had been a misplaced joke about her inability to feel or talk about love, and Angie still didn’t feel like she had properly apologised. “Danni,” she said. “Do you know…are they together? Or has Pete just been travelling with Mac because she was burnt out and badly injured and they’re friends, and he knows what that’s all like and how best to handle it?”

“I think we both might need to ask them that,” Danni said, unwilling to divulge the fact that Ellen and Peter were deeply in love, or the fact that she had known this for more than just three months; for years, in fact. She found it strange that Peter hadn’t shared as much with Angie and Cameron. 

For example, Angie and Cameron had no idea that Ellen and Peter had carried on a yearlong, casual-but-not affair behind their old boss’ back eight years earlier. They had no idea that the old boss had found out and threatened Ellen with a transfer if she didn’t end it. They didn’t know that Peter had been in love with, or at least attracted to Ellen since she arrived, two years before Angie and Cameron even joined the unit. 

They also did not know that the reason Danni’s own brief, flirty affair with Peter had ended four years earlier had been because he confessed he was still in love with Ellen, who had risen to become the boss herself by then. They definitely didn’t know that Ellen and Peter had started tentatively dating four months earlier, in the weeks leading up to the restructure that changed their lives, and they had not been in Ellen’s hospital room when, badly concussed, Ellen had told Peter that she was in love with him, too. 

Danni was desperate to see them both after their time away, time for Ellen to properly recover from her head injury and the trauma of her assault, and to recover from the burnout that had been progressively plaguing her for the past few years. Angie was right; Peter was the best person to have around during that process. The man had suffered through multiple concussions, he had been beaten and tortured, and after twenty-six years in the police and nearly twenty years in undercover, he was still himself, still sane, still Peter Church. Danni also knew that Ellen was just as strong.

Yet it was Peter who had called Danni regularly for updates. They were friends and she was in Homicide and in the position to know everything about the case they were most concerned about, the still unsolved case affecting Ellen, and as worried as they both surely still were for Ellen’s safety, he always sounded genuinely, deeply happy. 

“Knock-knock,” Shirley said as she pushed the bedroom door open again and smiled. “There is a lovely looking brunette woman in a bright pink dress, currently hugging the groom. I didn’t see the eyes, but the man beside her definitely has a strong policeman vibe in his suit. Also, it’s time. Angie, whenever you’re ready darling.”

“Okay,” Angie said in a weak voice as she stood and fanned her face. “Shirley, will you still walk with me?”

“Of course!” Shirley gushed with a lighthearted laugh. She approached Angie and pulled her into a warm hug. The absence of Angie’s parents and sister was not lost on Danni; it wasn’t lost on Shirley either, and she softly reassured Angie like a mother. 

“You two take your time,” Danni said. “Angie, just relax, deep breaths. I’m going to investigate this allegedly bright pink dress our Detective Senior Sergeant is in!” She left and hurried out. In addition to wanting to see Ellen and Peter, she had left her small handbag and camera on two of the few chairs near the front, beside where Shirley would sit, and she wanted to make sure all three seats were still reserved. 

“Here she is!” Cam said happily as he clapped his hands together. He was standing in between the celebrant and the woman in pink. Some of the other two dozen guests – neighbours and friends from town and the police – turned around expecting to see Angie in her white dress, but it was just Danni in dark blue. She smiled broadly as the woman in pink and her partner both turned as well. Shirley had guessed right, but turning around had not been necessary; Danni recognised them both from behind. 

“Hello!” she declared as she quickened her last few steps across the short grass, towards the spot not far from the house, overlooking the lake and the southern aspect of the property. Most people spent a long time looking for the right venue for a wedding, and it cost a fortune, but Angie and Cam had just needed to pick an outlook. 

Danni got to Peter first. His navy suit jacket was slung over one arm and he was dressed in navy pants and a plain long-sleeved shirt. His sunglasses were perched on top of his light brown hair, which he had let grow out over the past three months into a relaxed dishevelment of golden-brown-grey curls. His light blue eyes reflected the afternoon sun and looked silver as he grinned and opened his arms to embrace her.

“Ah, it’s Detective Mayo!” he declared as they hugged tightly. “You look beautiful, Danni,” he said as they parted and he got a better look at her knee-length, dark blue, sleeveless dress with its high neckline. “C’mon, give us a twirl. Danni in a dress, ha!”

Danni rolled her eyes and did a playful twirl as he laughed and then gestured behind him for Ellen. Danni blushed and tucked her dark blonde hair more neatly behind her ears again when Ellen stepped forward with a reserved but genuine smile. Her head was cocked to the side, and her own much darker straight hair was also out, cut to shape around her high cheekbones and jaw. Longer layers just touched her shoulder. 

“So Peter grew his hair and you cut yours,” Danni assessed quickly. Ellen and Peter shared a silent, amused glance at one another before Ellen playfully scrunched up her face and nodded. She shrugged. 

“That’s about it,” she said. “That’s all we accomplished in three months, I’m afraid.”

“Ha, that’s a pity,” Danni agreed in jest. She took a step towards their old boss and hoped for an easy hug, like the one she had just shared with Peter, but with Ellen it was never guaranteed. It depended on how she was feeling, she was so naturally reserved and for the past five years she had been Danni’s senior officer. Also a friend of course, but that had needed to come second…sometimes a far, far away second.

It was Ellen who looked beautiful though, Danni thought. She was truly in a bright pink dress. It was strapless, made of a cottony-satin-silk fabric sewn into a simple wrap-around bodice and loose pencil skirt that fell just below the knee. The dress looked relaxed and beachy but still semi-formal, especially with the white wrap draped over Ellen’s bare upper back and her shoulders. She was tanned and she was still lean, but she was also far healthier than when Danni had last seen her. Ellen had been pale, physically and mentally exhausted, still recovering from her concussion and months of not looking after herself in the job. Now her skin was glowing, her cheeks, breasts and hips were slightly fuller, and the awful bony hollowness around her collarbones and chest had gone. 

Danni could have cried, she was that happy for her friend. She had been hoping that this was the Ellen who would return. ‘Her true self,’ Peter had called it. Danni knew it was what Peter had always wanted. This was the Ellen he had always seen, regardless. 

“Well hi, do I get a hug now you’re not my boss?” Danni asked, deciding to be direct. 

“Okay,” Ellen said. Her cheeks and their creamy olive tone flushed. She bit her bottom lip briefly, a small crinkle appeared momentarily between her eyebrows, but Danni put that reaction down to it being three months since they had seen or even spoken to each other. Or perhaps Ellen was just remembering that Danni had seen her naked, too thin and bruised in the hospital ward’s shower all those months back. 

Danni took the lead and stepped forward to wrap Ellen in her long, warm arms. They were the same height but had very different figures, no one ever described the curvaceous Detective as lean, and Danni was frankly just glad that she had found an acceptable dress with enough structure built in from the waist up to contain her bust. 

She was delighted when Ellen hugged her back tightly, as though she had missed her. 

“You look incredible,” Danni assured her as she squeezed for several seconds, before letting go. She looked directly into the deep, clear blue eyes of the woman who had been her boss but who Danni had always wanted the opportunity to be better friends with. There was a connection there; Danni just liked her. Peter had told her during the restructure that Ellen had always seen a little bit of herself in Danni, it was why Ellen hired her, and why Ellen had used what had to have been the last of her energy to ensure that Danni was promoted and transferred to Homicide. Danni loved her new job, and there weren’t enough words to thank her. “How are you feeling?” she asked instead. “You look so healthy and strong, Mac. Or Ellen I should say. Just beautiful.”

“Thanks Danni,” Ellen said with a shy but quietly confident smile. Tears filled her ocean-blue eyes. “I’m really, really good.”

“Are you sure?” Danni asked, half-laughing when she saw Ellen use the back of her hand to dab at one of her damp eyes. She gave her shoulder a friendly, soothing squeeze. “Do you need me to twirl for you as well?”

“No, no,” Ellen said, laughing as she composed herself. “It’s just good to see you. Big day huh? Sorry I um…I’m so sorry I didn’t call. How is work? How are you?”

“Brilliant,” Danni said with a grin. “Work’s hard, you know, but I’m enjoying it.”

“And I am getting married in like a minute,” Cam said as he stuck his head in between them and grinned cheekily, nervously. “So do you three in the aisle want to perhaps continue the ‘are you good? I’m good’ chit-chat a little later?”

Danni scoffed and rolled her eyes, before gesturing for Ellen and Peter to follow her. She picked up her camera and purse so they could sit; she sat beside Shirley’s chair, while her two friends briefly fought to share the seat of the third and final free chair right at the front. Danni smirked as she watched them holding onto each other’s thighs so neither one of them fell off the half a chair they had coveted. They were happy, she decided, before turning her attention to the house. Shirley and Angie had appeared. 

It was a simple wedding, there was no music, there was only the silence of the guests, the click of the odd camera, and the sounds of the country to guide Angie down the aisle towards Cam and the local celebrant. The early spring breeze rustled the trees in the distance and Danni grinned. She stood and took photographs. Beside Angie, Shirley was beaming. Shirley was a few inches shorter than Angie, soft and plump in a middle-aged, hard-working, mother-of-three-sons kind of way. She had experienced an awful few months after her husband Charlie’s sudden death – a day after returning from their youngest son’s wedding – and this wedding was in part for her as well. 

Danni was glad that they were all getting a reprieve, in a way. She was grateful for the time they’d all had to settle. Life was about to get serious again, and she just hoped that they all – and Ellen and Peter, specifically – were ready for what was to come.


	2. Chapter 2

TWO

It was Sunday evening when Peter pulled the car into the driveway of the house Danni had directed them to. In the fading light Danni had parked on the suburban street just a minute earlier, and was already waiting at the head of the driveway, near the front door. Security lights had flickered on overhead. Peter and Ellen both sat in their car for several seconds longer and leant forward to look up at the home in front of them.

“Looks smart, I guess,” Peter said of the narrow brick cottage. The old bricks were painted off-white, with black trim around the windows and guttering, and Danni was waiting in front of a black front door. There wasn’t a garden to look at; the cement driveway took up the entire space in front of the house. Historically, where they were parked would have once been a front yard, perhaps with a picket fence and a row of rose bushes. Now it was a cement wasteland, as far as Peter was concerned. He had only sold his modern, inner-city warehouse conversion four months earlier, and it hadn’t had a garden either, but that had always made sense. For this property, for where they currently found themselves, it made no sense. It was ugly, Peter hated it.

“So this is our new home,” Ellen said softly. “Or something like it.”

“You go that right,” Peter said on a sigh. He undid his seatbelt and gave her thigh a squeeze. They looked at each other and Ellen returned a wary smile.

“Let’s see what they’ve done with the place, then,” she said. She undid her own seatbelt and reached for her handbag at her feet, as Peter got out of the car and immediately opened the boot for their suitcases. They had gotten off the flight from Tasmania and checked into a hotel for the night, before driving the hire-car out to the Pierce property. They hadn’t been home; they didn’t actually have homes anymore. 

“Welcome,” Danni said with a broad, hopeful smile as Ellen took one suitcase and Peter another. Peter locked the hire-car and they rolled their bags towards Danni and the entrance. She turned and led the way through the front door, before she stood flush against the front hall to allow them in quickly ahead of her. “Security lights and motion sensors outside your front and back doors,” she explained. She shut the door and gestured to the alarm keypad mounted on the wall. “The six digit code is your birthday, Ellen,” she said as she herself reached out and disarmed the home. “There’s an instruction manual in the kitchen so that you can work out how to set it. If it is tripped, someone will call the landline, and if no one answers the police will come.”

“Okay,” Ellen said on a deep breath as she nodded. She looked back to the front door, where there was a standard lock at the handle, as well as a deadbolt several inches above it. A key was sitting in the deadbolt, allowing her to keep the door securely locked from the outside, but to also get out quickly if need be.

“Cameras?” Peter asked. 

“Oh yes, several. There’s one just outside the front door, top right corner, overlooking the entrance and part of the driveway. Leave your suitcases for now and follow me,” she said. Peter and Ellen silently followed her down the short, central hallway, as Danni continued with her tour. “The front room on your right is a small sitting room, formal lounge, but there’s not a lot of privacy so just keep the curtains closed. There’s a camera in there because of the window that looks onto the driveway and street. The alarm at the front door arms both and will go off if this window is opened as well.”

“Good to know,” Peter said with a thoughtful nod. They continued down the hallway to observe the room on the left. From the hall, they could stare straight ahead and see directly out of the room’s large window, which provided a bland view of the close, tall fence separating the house from its next-door neighbour. To the right of the room was the head of a large bed, framed by two side tables.

“This is the master bedroom,” Danni said. “Or at least that is what I decided when I came through here and worked out where to put some of your stuff. A selection of your work and casual clothes are in the wardrobe, shoes too. Pete, you’ll note that’s your bed, not Ellen’s, I hope that’s okay.”

“Fine,” Ellen assured her as she looked at the way the king size bed and two side tables took up almost every inch of space in a room that should have contained nothing larger than a double. At least there was a built in wardrobe along the entire left wall, but Ellen could not help feeling that there should have been a large window overlooking the front yard instead. It was the wall directly in front of where their hire-car was parked, and at some point in its history that window had been bricked in. 

“No cameras in here,” Danni assured them both, but she walked in and opened the top drawer to the nearest side table. “But inside here,” she said. “Is a switch that will activate a silent alarm. If you get into trouble in this room, you need to get to this switch, or out into one of the other rooms where we can hear and see.”

“Okay,” Ellen said as she crossed her arms tightly over her chest. She knew she was not the only one with a strong sense of foreboding, because right behind her Peter was absolutely silent. They both backed out of the doorway so that Danni could also get out and lead them onwards. She was efficient, professional, and rehearsed. 

“The back of the house is mostly open plan,” she said. “But here on the left is your bathroom, right next to the bedroom, and opposite that is a very small second bedroom, unfurnished. Out the back we have the kitchen on the right, and a small dining space and living area on the left. You both had fairly large lounge suites and solid dining tables, and I’m sorry but none of it would fit, so that is all still in storage. You’ve got a television, and kitchen stuff in the drawers and cabinets. There’s some food in the fridge and pantry, or at least there should be. The couch is comfortable, I think. The little dining table and two-chair set is on loan from one of my colleagues. So only the bed is yours; I thought you might like that after so many months in hotels…I’m sorry it’s so squished compared to the homes you both sold.”

“My car?” Peter asked. 

“At my house, ready to deliver,” Danni promised. “Mac, your car is gone, sorry.”

“No, no, it was right that the house and car sold while I was away,” she said. “I owe you a huge thank you for managing it for us, and Peter’s not the one who had a partial number plate and address exposed. His car is fine. Where are the cameras here?”

“That corner,” Danni said as she pointed to the top right portion of the ceiling, above the television. “That one overlooks this whole living and cooking space. There’s also one right above us, at this juncture of where the hallway ends. It overlooks the same space but with an additional view directly out the back door.”

Peter walked ahead to look out of the door. Beside the door, an identical alarm pad to the one at the front had been installed. 

“Same code,” Danni said. “If you arm one you arm them all.”

“What’s outside?” Ellen asked as she joined Peter at the glass. The view was partially obscured by crisscrossed metal bars and a dark security screen.

“A small paved courtyard,” Danni said. “The same width of the house but there’s only about only two metres further back before you hit the back fence. There’s nothing out there. The principle of this place is that no one can hide, and everyone can see. The tall fence all around is corrugated iron, no climbable beams on the other sides, and you can close all the blinds if you like but you’re not overlooked; it’s all single story dwellings on this block. It’s a quiet street, but everything is close. You have a grocery store a few minutes’ drive away – you could walk but I wouldn’t recommend that.”

“Listening devices?” Peter asked. 

“Everywhere but the bedroom and bathroom,” Danni said. “It’s more precaution at this stage, because you won’t be here so often; it will mostly be Ellen on her own.”

“Who’s going to be watching me while I’m here?” Ellen asked. 

“A couple of Constables working with us in Homicide. You’ll get to meet them of course, when you start back at work yourself in a few days. They’ll also be monitoring Peter and I in our safe house, if that’s where we are. I’ve spent the last two months training the surveillance crew, so they’re good value and I trust them.”

“I never thought I’d see the day when Homicide ran their own undercover op,” Peter said with a wary chuckle. “I’d be so concerned if you weren’t supervising, Danni.”

“Well thanks to the restructure that’s basically what everyone has to do now, if they feel it’s necessary,” Danni said. “In this case, we now have no other options. There will be a briefing tomorrow at eleven o’clock that you’re both expected at, and if you bring the rental to HQ we’ll do a switch; I’ll have Pete’s car waiting. Peter, I assume you’re fine with Ellen driving your beloved car while you’re on the job?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Absolutely Danni.”

“Good, good, just checking!” she sang playfully as she met Ellen’s eyes and they smirked. Yet Danni’s green eyes quickly returned to an expression of serious concern and she lowered her voice and stared at her old boss, whose arms were still firmly wrapped around her slender waist. “Mac, Ellen,” Danni said. “Are you okay with this? I know it’s not a lot of privacy, and I am sorry, but until we find out who filmed you, how Kiera got hold of that footage and your personal information, why she broadcast it on the net four months ago, and how whoever assaulted you knew where to find you during a covert surveillance op, we really need to keep you under strict police guard. Everyone who will be watching and listening, everyone who knows where you are, at this address – and it’s a very short list – has been strictly vetted.”

“It’s fine,” Ellen said. “I can still contact my mother and sister?”

“Of course,” Danni said with a warm smile. “You are free to come and go, and you’re not stuck here. We want you to be at HQ with us, working with Homicide, making sure that Peter and I don’t get our heads blown off while we’re doing our jobs, too.”

“I can do that,” Ellen assured her with a confident nod and small smile. “Thank you for trying to make this nice for us too, or for me I should say. It’s definitely safe.”

“I hope so,” Danni said as she looked around. “I think I’ve told you everything important. We won’t be moving into the safe house for a few days, so you both can settle in here. HQ tomorrow though, and I’ll see you there?” she asked. She dug her hand into the pocket of her jeans and retrieved a set of keys that she handed to Ellen. “For you,” she added. “And Peter, I’ve got a single front door key for you at work. We just can’t have you carrying around a full set of keys to nothing, you know that.”

“Yep,” he said with a serious nod. He clapped his hands together and looked around. He was hungry and needed to pee. “Okay, thanks Danni. We can take it from here.”

“Just remember,” she said as she pointed around the room. “Eyes and ears. You can talk and be together in confidence here, try to make yourselves comfortable, but it’s not strictly private. I’ve moved you into a fishbowl…I hope it won’t be for long.”

“It’s all right Danni,” Ellen said with a kind but muted smile. “We made the decision to come back and finish this. I don’t want to disappear, I don’t want to change my name, and I don’t want to end my career in the police over this. I want that on my terms, not a stranger’s. Peter and I have talked about it and we’re here, we want to find out who murdered Kiera and why, we’ll accept the risks…and the surveillance.”

“When you’re not at HQ you’ll be here on your own, most of the time,” Danni said. “I just want to make sure you’re okay with that. You let us know if you’re not coping.”

“I’ll be here to eat and sleep, that’s it,” Ellen said with a more certain smile. “Easy.”

“Okay, good. I’ll go then,” Danni said on a sigh as she looked between them. “One of you lock and arm the door behind me.”

“I’ll do it,” Ellen said. “It’ll be good practice, just in case I forget my birthday!” She and Danni laughed as Peter ducked into the toilet after a quick goodbye. “Honestly Danni,” Ellen continued as she held the front door open and sighed. “Thanks for this.”

“I would say it must be good to be home, but it probably isn’t.”

“Not really,” Ellen said with a wry smile. “But this is what we signed on for. It will be very strange to put on a suit tomorrow.”

“Mm, ditching the bikini for the blazer,” Danni agreed with a nod and closed-lip lip. “I hope you took some pictures during this amazing holiday, I’d love to see some.”

“That can be arranged,” Ellen said as she gestured to her bag. “But uh, we’re going to settle in for the night now. Tell Neil I appreciate the safe house. I assume he knows-”

“The Head of Homicide? He knows where you are,” Danni assured her. “Other than Neil, it’s just me, my partner Hayden, and the two guys I’ve trained who are sworn to secrecy. I’ve been able to put my own little team together for this. So if anyone else finds out this address, or who is living here, then they’ve found out another way.”

“Got it,” Ellen said with an efficient nod. “And the meeting tomorrow?”

“It will be locked down,” Danni said. “But we’ll walk you through the arena first. We’ve put you in a fishbowl, and we want everyone to know you’re back in town. Enjoy your evening!”

“Bye,” Ellen said. She watched until Danni was safely in her car on the street before closing and locking the door. After a quick trip to the toilet herself, she met Peter in the bedroom. He had brought in their suitcases and opened them both up on the floor at the foot of the bed. There was just enough room between the bed and the wardrobe for the suitcases, and one of them would either need to jump across or climb across the bed itself to get to the other side. 

Ellen opened the wardrobe by sliding one of the glass panels onto the other, and the first thing she saw were her clothes. Simple, sensible, white and blue cotton blouses and a range of navy, black and the odd grey suit were hanging in her half of the closet. She closed her side of the robe and pulled the other door towards her, revealing a collection of Peter’s smart-casual short and long-sleeved shirts, his jeans, a few pairs of non-denim pants, and all of their thick coats and scarves. It was winter when they left, but they had been heading north; all Ellen had packed by way of coats was a cardigan and a singlet, and Danni had found the rest. Back in the city, the spring weather would remain unpredictable, and likely chilled for another month or two. 

“It’s strange,” she said. “To see these clothes again. It feels like a long time.”

“Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie and Sergeant Peter Church, in the house!” Peter announced as he flopped backwards over his bed and released a satisfied groan. “Oh, this is so good I don’t even mind we’re being bossed around by a Detective Senior Constable! Ha! Hello bed!” 

There was nothing in the rule book of setting up a safe-house that said police should try to import the undercover cop’s own bed just to make things more comfortable for the poor bugger, but Danni had gone ahead and done it anyway. He wouldn’t get the chance to enjoy it for long, but at least Ellen would. She deserved a proper mattress. 

“So,” Ellen said as she knelt beside him. Her voice was almost excited, her deep blue eyes tired from the drive, but sparkling and perhaps hopeful. “What do you think?”

“I think that they’ve gone overboard with the surveillance but it’s Danni’s first time running an op and she would die before she let anything happen to you again,” Peter said with a wise smirk as he looked up at her. “I also think we’ll have to be really careful what we say and do outside this room in the next few days. And I think that…as much as I hate to admit it, this is a good plan. It’s the right thing to do.”

“I feel bad that we didn’t tell Angie and Cam,” Ellen admitted with a small frown. “They know we’re back here working with Homicide to help find Kiera’s killer and to find out what happened with me, but they don’t know exactly what we’re doing here.”

“We’re still undercover cops,” Peter said. “They’re not anymore, it wouldn’t be right. I’m sure they’ve figured that out, but I think they would understand if we explained it too, especially with Angie telling us that she’s pregnant! Jesus, talk about speedy!”

“I don’t think it was planned,” Ellen said on a dry laugh as she slipped off her knees and onto the mattress. She held a hand to his thigh for balance and thought for a second, before adding, “I guess you’re right. It’s going to take time for me to adjust to them as this married couple out on his mum’s property, and Cam’s back in uniform, as parents. You realise that we haven’t confirmed to them that we’re together, either.”

“Eh. They’ll figure it out,” Peter said simply. Ellen smirked at him, and he chuckled. His grin was cheeky and droll, and Ellen leant forward to gently kiss that grin on his lips. Peter lifted a hand and threaded his fingers through her long bob cut, massaging the back of her neck and keeping her above him. They hadn’t kissed at the wedding.

“You know what?” she asked when she pulled back just far enough to look him directly in the eyes. She loved the way his eyes sparkled when he looked up at her after a kiss. She could place the moments in their past when he had looked at her the same way and she just hadn’t noticed, or she hadn’t wanted to notice, but now she saw it all the time. It didn’t scare her as much as it had three or four months earlier. 

“What?” he asked. His hand left her neck and his fingers brushed her hair behind her ears, they flitted across her temple and smoothed the skin on her cheeks. 

Ellen shut her eyes and turned her face into his exploring, tender hand. She breathed deeply as she relaxed into his touch. It was only for a moment, before she opened her eyes, grinned with the equally cheeky and droll grin that she had stolen from him minutes earlier, and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever actually slept in this bed before.”

“Yeah you have, beautiful,” Peter told her gently as she stared at him and frowned. He smiled. “After your assault, a day or two after you got out of hospital, you had a migraine and I brought you back to my place. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten hurling your guts out in my ensuite and then crawling into bed to pass out? I’m offended!”

“Ooh,” Ellen said as the hazy memory of a dark room on a sunny winter afternoon flitted back into her consciousness. They had left on their holiday earlier than planned after that, first to a hotel the next day and then interstate a few days later, right after Peter sat for his Sergeant’s exam. It had become unsafe for her to go home or even to work; the undercover unit she’d run had emptied out and closed its doors without her. 

“Do you remember, Elle, love?” Peter asked gently, not wanting to upset her. 

“I think so. Sorry, the concussion knocked that right out of my head? I do remember you holding me up in the shower and your clothes got so wet. It was romantic stuff.” 

Ellen raised a coy eyebrow while she smirked and crinkled her brow. Peter grinned at the complicated, intelligent, ‘so do you want to try to improve upon that’ expression, which was really an attempt to cover embarrassment. He ran one of his hands around her head again, combing his fingers through her hair over where there had been a large bump a few months back. It could have been a lot worse; the odd lost memory was the best possible outcome. He could not wait to find out who had tried to kill her. He wanted her to know as well, but to protect her from that knowledge all the same. 

Ellen saw it in his eyes, she knew in the way he touched her, she knew what he was thinking as his clear blue eyes searched hers, all at once apologising for the fact she had been hurt, and assuring her that he didn’t mind, that it didn’t change anything. 

“Love you,” she said. She was a lot better at saying it than she had been. She’d had a lot of practice over their time away. “I’m glad you can stay a few days,” she added.

Peter smiled kindly and nodded. He reached for her more surely, playfully, and Ellen replied with an ‘oof!’ and a laugh, as she collapsed beside him and hugged him tight.


	3. Chapter 3

THREE

Danni was standing in the middle of the office speaking to her colleagues when the elevator doors opened the next day, at five minutes to eleven exactly, and Ellen and Peter emerged. Ellen’s dark hair was tucked behind her ears and she was dressed in an imposing navy suit-skirt and jacket with a crisp, white blouse. Peter was dressed in his usual casual jeans and a neat blue shirt; he had been a plain-clothes officer for nearly twenty years and even though he had been awarded the rank of Sergeant in his absence, he was not in a hurry to step back into a uniform. 

In addition to Ellen holding her slender briefcase, they were both holding their police identification badges. They would have needed them to get in on their own, but Danni could not help wondering how it felt for them. Ellen was used to it, but perhaps it no longer felt natural? For Peter, carrying around a badge as an undercover cop was just not done, but he had accompanied Ellen to a lot of meetings in the months before the unit closed, so perhaps it did not feel that strange. It looked strange, to Danni at least.

The aim had been for them to make an entrance and it worked, simply because Ellen had been a familiar face at police headquarters and particularly at Homicide over the past decade. Danni broke away from the group and gestured to get their attention. 

“Mac, Church, thanks for coming!” she exclaimed relatively loudly, as she strode towards them with an air of confidence. This was her workplace now, both had rarely seen her in a pantsuit, and her blonde hair was pulled back in a slick ponytail. She gave Peter’s arm a squeeze in lieu of a hug and smiled a broad, toothy smile at Ellen. 

“It’s so weird you work here now,” Peter said as he chuckled and gestured for her to show them to where they were meant to be. “As long as I don’t have to call you my boss.”

“Uh, no, I’m still only a Detective Senior Constable,” she said with a laugh. “Follow me, Neil’s expecting us.” They walked quickly across the open-plan office, but there was still opportunity for Ellen to make eye contact with people who knew her, to smile and say hello. 

“Ellen Mackenzie!” Neil said as he stepped out of his office in anticipation. He was a tall man, his voice boomed, and he held a long, strong arm out to shake her hand. 

“Hi Neil,” Ellen said with a broad smile as she gripped his hand and looked up into his dark eyes. “Good to see you again.”

“How was long service leave?”

“Ah, relaxing!” she admitted with an easygoing laugh. “You remember Peter?”

“Of course. I hear you’ve been keeping busy as well,” Neil said as the two men also shook hands. Peter nodded. Neil knew that they had been together, one or two people other than Neil at headquarters might have guessed, but that was not going to be confirmed in public. Again, if someone was discovered to have known about the relationship, it could be safely assumed that they had found out some other way. 

Neil led them both into his office, Danni trailed in afterwards, and she shut the door. 

“Take a seat,” Neil said in a more normal voice as he gestured to the three chairs positioned around his desk in preparation for their meeting. “Now, how was your holiday really?”

“It was wonderful,” Ellen said in a softer voice as well. She took the middle seat, in between Peter and Danni, as Neil sat behind his desk. “It was pretty hard to come back,” Ellen admitted. “But our friends decided to get married and Danni has been keeping us updated on the case…we really didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Well you both look well, which is nice to see considering the last time I saw you, Ellen, you were in hospital. Danni and you lot from Covert Services sure know how to whisk someone away…she wouldn’t even tell me where you were after that.”

“Mm,” Ellen hummed with a bemused smirk. “Well we do suspect there could be police involvement. Is that still the impression you have?”

“Yes,” Neil said. “What I wanted to do today was to recap, just the four of us, so that we are all on the same page, and so that we all know what’s going to happen next.”

“I would actually appreciate that,” Ellen said as she sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. “In the spirit of full disclosure, my memory of the events on the day of my assault and the days afterwards is not always clear. Even the assault…I know that I gave a very detailed statement at the time, and I know it’s still there up inside my head, but it’s a memory I’ve found difficult to hold onto.”

“You had a serious concussion, Ellen,” Danni said as she looked over at her friend with a kind smile. “You’ve recovered better than most. That is absolutely fine.”

“I just meant that a recap would be nice,” Ellen assured them both with a wary smile. 

Beside her, Peter resisted the urge to take her hand. Ellen rarely admitted to or displayed signs of weakness, but she also didn’t need comforting almost because of that very reason; she looked and sounded composed, the epitome of professionalism.

“Okay,” Neil said. “Well as we all know, this scenario began to unravel from about four months ago, when Ellen, you were asked by Sex Crimes to run a covert surveillance operation in a park where five women had been beaten and sexually assaulted. As a result, you and Constable Piper were in the park most nights, on the running track where these assaults had occurred. You were there in the interests of public safety and also to monitor foot traffic for any suspicious persons in the vicinity. Your team had set up surveillance cameras along the track and Danni, Peter and Constable Stone rotated surveillance duties in a van down the street.”

“Correct,” Ellen said as she nodded. “The job had only been running for a week or two before it was interrupted.”

“On a Thursday morning, Kiera Rudonikis was beaten and killed,” Neil continued. “However, while this initially looked like the same perp, there were differences to all the other assaults. It happened early in the morning, in a park on the other side of town, and Kiera was much younger than the other victims, all women in their thirties and forties. Kiera was also not sexually assaulted, but was severely beaten around the face with a rock and her neck was broken. She died a few hours after being admitted to hospital. She was seventeen years old, and lived with her epileptic mother.”

“We all assumed it was number six,” Peter said. “Even though our guy had never used a rock before and this felt more opportunistic. Going into the surveillance operation that night we weren’t expecting any activity. If he had killed a kid in the morning, what were the chances he would head to the park that very night to try it again?”

“However, that night, Ellen was attacked,” Neil continued. “Contables Piper and Stone were on an RDO and were not in attendance. Ellen, you did your time on the running track and in the park, and when it started to rain you returned to your car. You were assaulted at your car on the footpath outside of the park – this had also never happened with any of the other victims – and you were able to stave off the worst of a beating before losing consciousness.”

“Yes,” Ellen said with a simple nod. “I was in hospital for about two and a half days with a serious concussion and a few bruises.”

“The M.O. of your attack was different to the other victims in the park, and also different from Kiera,” Neil said. “This time it was outside the park, you are in the right age group – late thirties – but you were not sexually assaulted and there was also no rock or other weapon involved, it was hand-to-hand combat.”

“More like hand-to-head, but yes,” Ellen said with a wry smirk. 

“Peter and I were in the surveillance van,” Danni filled in. “We could just see Ellen’s car up the road, but when I saw her safely cross the street I looked down to fill out the log book, and Peter turned off the two-way communication device that had allowed us to hear everything that Ellen said or heard around her. We would have heard the attack, she did call out for Peter, but it was perhaps two minutes later when I finished the logbook and looked up, and Peter settled for the drive back, and we realised that Ellen’s car was still there and that we couldn’t see her.”

“I sent Danni out to look,” Peter said. “I turned back on the comms device and tried to reach Ellen through her earpiece and also through the radio in her car. Once she didn’t answer either, I knew she wasn’t actually in her car. I got out of the van, locked her up, and followed Danni down the street; Danni was armed and I had the dispatch radio in case we needed to call for backup fast. We’d only gone a few metres when we saw a man stand up between two cars much further along than Ellen’s car, and he ran in the opposite direction.”

“He was wearing the baseball cap that Ellen had been using as part of her cover,” Danni said. “And we now know that person was Hamish Berger. Berger is a car thief who was identified on our surveillance over the previous week. The area was suggested to Berger by his buddy Ben – also identified on surveillance – as a secluded part of town that would be easy to stake out for jobs. Plenty of cars are parked along that street overnight and it backs onto a park and the back of a row of houses. The foot traffic is mostly during peak hour, with people walking home from nearby rail and tram stops. Ben was also present that night, but left early and was not in the vicinity when Ellen was assaulted.”

“Berger admits to witnessing the attack,” Ellen continued. She remembered interviewing him with Danni, though the specifics of what he had told her had been lost to her long-term memory. “He said he was looking closely at a particular car to steal, when he heard me returning and hid, and then someone rushed past him towards me.”

“Berger did nothing during the assault,” Danni added. “It only took a few minutes, it was fast and silent and no one else came past. He remained hidden between two cars and watched, and when the man who did assault Ellen returned in his direction, our unknown perp threw down Ellen’s cap and called Berger a pervert for watching. Berger was afraid that Ellen was dead and that he was about to be caught at the scene, so he picked up the hat, put it on his head in the hope that no one would recognise him, and he also ran. He denies knowing the man who assaulted Ellen, he could not provide a good description other than to confirm what Ellen had already told us – he was wearing athletic skins, no gloves, dark beard – and while he made no move to call an ambulance or assist at the time, he has since been very helpful to us.”

“He’s definitely not our guy,” Peter confirmed. “Ellen’s always been adamant about that. He’s about the right height, but different beard, different build.”

“Too chicken,” Ellen added. She crossed her arms over her chest and sighed. “So in the days afterwards, it quickly became clear that the differences in M.O. were meaningful. Kiera’s computer?”

“Yes,” Neil said. “Until Kiera’s death, this was an operation run exclusively by Sex Crimes and Covert Services, but Homicide were called in to investigate her murder and to assist, and we recovered Kiera’s computer and searched her personal belongings to identify any possible motive for murdering a seventeen year old girl…At the beginning, this was more to rule out deliberate killing, because we too felt that this was probably opportunistic, and linked to the other assaults in the city.”

“So you were just doing your routine work,” Peter said. Neil nodded.

“Yes. However, instead of finding nothing to suggest a motive for Kiera’s murder, we found two possible motives. For a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl, that is highly unusual. The first was a confession by her mother that for some years Kiera had been providing the mother with cannabis to help control her epileptic seizures. By a very strange and troubling coincidence, Danni then told us that she and Peter had been working undercover with a drug dealer called Lachlan Fraser, who had said specifically that one of his clients was a teenage girl caring for her epileptic mother. It seemed very likely that the drug dealer who Peter and Danni had established a cover for was in fact Kiera’s supplier, but the mother would not confirm the supplier’s name, and the mobile phone Kiera allegedly used to contact this dealer had disappeared, presumed stolen in her attack. When police went to question Fraser, we found him deceased. The death is currently considered a suicide, there was a vague note of apology found by the body, but we remain open to the possibility of murder.”

“I don’t think Fraser was capable of killing Kiera the way she was attacked,” Danni said. “He was a pretty gentle guy…a bit of a chicken, same as Berger, who preferred to just go about his own illegal activities without getting into the thick of anything too serious. I certainly do not see him as someone who would pick up a rock and bash a girl’s face in…and I’m not sure he would even know how to break a neck.”

“I’d agree with that assessment,” Peter said. “Sometimes we’re undercover and the people we’re working with seriously freak us out, they are scary, but Fraser not so much. He was stalling, promising us big things and bigger contacts, but he wasn’t coming through. We were getting frustrated, but we never saw him frustrated.”

“If anything, we’re the ones who made him edgy,” Danni said. “Trying to push him. Of course, in the week or two before Ellen’s assault, she had pulled us off the Fraser case. With the impending restructure and the closure of undercover units across the city, we weren’t authorised to spend any more money on informants or active ops.”

“Nevertheless,” Neil said. “Kiera could have been killed in relation to a cannabis transaction. We could never confirm that Lachlan was her supplier, and we could never confirm that she didn’t have another supplier, or that she hadn’t gotten involved at a higher level. The only evidence of drugs in her home was a small amount of cannabis that the mother copped to, she vehemently denies her daughter had any other interest in the stuff…but without Lachlan Fraser’s testimony we can’t rule it out.”

“The second possible motive identified as a result of going through Kiera’s possessions is much more serious,” Danni said after everyone had paused for a few seconds to consider where that part of the open case had stalled. “While Ellen was still in hospital, Homicide also discovered that Kiera had just three days earlier posted an advertisement on a number of online chat rooms. She advertised that she knew personal information about an undercover police officer by the name of Ellen Mackenzie or Kristine Callum, she posted a physical description that read: slightly above average height, brown hair, fair olive skin, blue eyes, thin, somewhat European in appearance – whatever that means – and Australian accent.”

“I can do other accents,” Ellen quipped in mock-seriousness.

“While that all sounds vague enough, it does demonstrate that Kiera, or whoever gave Kiera that information, has been up close and personal with you at some point,” Danni said, genuinely seriously. “When I was packing up your personal possessions before the removalists came in I found your birth certificate, your change of name certificate, your amended birth certificate, your adoption records, everything. It was in a folder in a drawer, it wasn’t difficult to find, and Ellen, those papers don’t exist in hard copy anywhere else outside of where you kept them. That name, Kristine Callum, and the fact that it belongs to you, can only be discovered through personal conversation, through the registry database, and by handling those papers.”

“I’m aware of that,” Ellen assured her more calmly.

“In that same folder I also found copies of all of Peter’s papers-”

“We had backups at each other’s houses,” he explained quickly. “Birth certificates, tax file numbers, next of kin info. Had for years, just in case.”

“I know, I guessed as much when I also found the seven year old Power of Attorney forms for you, appointing Ellen on your behalf, and a copy or yours for her…all there. If they got the name Kristine Callum from that folder, then they got everything.”

“On both of us, we know,” Peter said softly. “We’ve figured that out.”

“We had spare passport photos for each other as well,” Ellen mentioned as she remembered. “They were probably seven years old too, but a set of four photos each.”

“I found those too,” Danni said. “It’s all bundled up ready to return to you, but if someone did get your information by going to your house, then for whatever reason they decided not to use the photos. Instead, attached to the advertisements was a short, silent video recorded without your permission, showing you putting groceries in your car outside a shopping centre, and also waiting outside your home for a lift. The latter was only filmed one day before that video went online. Kiera was promising more information in return for cash, and had asked people to contact her. Again, we don’t know if Kiera made that footage herself, or if it was provided to her by someone else. We also have no idea why she would have any interest in outing you or any other police officer. I really doubt she would be able to break into your home.”

“There’s nothing in her past to suggest she has a vendetta against cops?” Peter asked.

“No,” Danni said. “It’s not in her mother’s background or temperament either.”

“Finally,” Neil said. “Leaving the possible home invasion to one side, we are very concerned about where Ellen’s assault took place. I’m sure Danni told you this, but while you were both on long service leave, Sex Crimes did make an arrest. A man in his late twenties was arrested and charged for those assaults in the park. He’s confessed, but he very much denies having anything to do with Kiera’s death, or your assault. He also does not match the specific physical description you provided, Ellen.”

“He has fair hair and doesn’t have a beard,” Ellen recounted. “Yes, Danni told us.”

“He has not been charged with your assault, or with Kiera’s murder,” Neil confirmed. “We are confident that he had nothing to do with either, and that now allows us to rule him out and move on to other possibilities. The worrying aspect of this situation we now have stems from two points. The first is that very few people know that the name given to you by your adopted parents when you were an infant is Kristine Callum, because you changed it to your birth name Ellen and chose Mackenzie as a surname once you left high school, before you moved from Sydney for university.”

“Correct,” Ellen said. “Peter knew my family history, my biological mother and half-sister know, my adopted parents know – they’re still in Sydney – and of course it’s in my personnel file. But even Danni didn’t know I was adopted until this all came out. That name, Kristine Callum, it is not well known to people who know me, even to people who I would consider to be some of my closest acquaintances.”

“Well there’s that,” Neil continued. “And also the fact that you were assaulted at the site of a surveillance operation that also was not common knowledge. You had driven there from your workplace, which itself was at an undisclosed location. There was even a surveillance van parked down the street, that whoever attacked you either knew nothing about or didn’t care about. My problem is how anyone even knew that was where you would be. It is possible that Kiera told someone your address, and that they followed you from your home to your workplace to the park, but-”

“That’s a very tight timeframe,” Ellen said with a thoughtful frown. “Assuming it took a couple of days before that video of me got to someone who actually did recognise me and said, ‘Ahah! I remember her! Let’s kill the bitch!’ and then it took some time to contact Kiera and arrange a cash transfer – I do remember that you all said her bank account did not have any unusual deposits in it – then we can probably assume that Kiera was killed at what was meant to be that exchange of cash for information. Instead, they took their information and refused to hand over the cash.”

“They killed the silly kid instead,” Peter said softly.


	4. Chapter 4

FOUR

“If that were true,” Ellen said. “It means that after killing Kiera, this person went home and cleaned up, and then went straight to my address. I did go home that Thursday afternoon, just briefly. They would have had to make a decision to follow me from there, and you’d be correct in assuming that when I got back to my car at the park that night they saw their chance to attack…but that is an extremely tight timeframe. It leaves no room for indecision, nor does it leave room for premeditation. It would mean that whoever did this was absolutely, one hundred percent committed to some kind of attack on me. But I haven’t had a significant role in undercover operations for years; I’d been running that undercover unit for five years. So anyone who thought they recognised me would need to search their memory to be sure.”

“Unless it didn’t matter,” Peter said. “Unless this information fell in to the hands of someone who doesn’t care what cop they kill, as long as they get one. That’s what happened to my fiancée twenty-odd years ago; she was just walking down the street in her uniform and some dickhead shot her. No special reason or anything, he just didn’t like a woman in a uniform. That could be the case here, too.”

“Maybe,” Neil acknowledged, as he watched Ellen reach out to lay a hand on Peter’s thigh. “I didn’t know that about your past, Church,” Neil continued. “Sorry mate.”

“Oh that’s okay,” Peter said on a sigh. “It was a long time ago. All my fiancées get shot and die, mate, she was just the first.”

“Very funny,” Ellen said slowly in an unimpressed whisper as she stared pointedly at him. She knew he felt Alice and Christina’s deaths more deeply than that. They had spoken about it, Peter had told her about Alice. If she had lived, Peter would probably be a Sergeant in uniform in the suburbs, raising a family with his petite blonde wife, maybe with three or four kids and a large, happy dog. They would be different people. 

They never would have even met. 

“It could be true that this is a more generalised vendetta,” Danni admitted, aware of the non-verbal conversation happening between Ellen and Peter, even though they weren’t actually looking at each other anymore. Ellen had looked away and removed her hand from his leg, and she was staring at her knees as Peter looked to Neil. Danni could feel it though, it was like they were still talking and it was eerie. “However,” she continued. “We do not know who set this up, we do not know why Ellen wasn’t just stabbed or shot or something a bit more effective than trying to bash her face in-”

“To make it look like the others,” Peter suggested. “Cover it up, same as Kiera.”

“But like Ellen just said,” Danni replied. “This person had no real time to plan this, if it happened that way. The other alternative is that Kiera was not killed by a person buying information, and Ellen also was not assaulted by anyone who had bought information. Instead, it could also be true that Kiera was killed by the person who had provided her with that information. Maybe they had second thoughts, and decided to finish the job themselves. Maybe Kiera was asking for too much money, or too much of whatever other favour was being done for her in exchange for her posting that footage online. Maybe she was even threatening to go to the cops, because from all reports this was not a bad kid, she was a good person. This is genuinely shocking.”

“You think one option is that whoever trusted her with this information to begin with realised it wasn’t a good idea to trust a seventeen year old girl after all?” Peter asked. 

“Possibly,” Ellen agreed as she thought about the situation. “If we follow that chain of events it leaves a lot more room for someone to think about doing this to me, to think about how they might best make it look like an accident, or like someone else was responsible. Palming responsibility off to a vulnerable teenage girl…it is clever.”

“Until they change their minds and realize it’s too risky and perhaps they want their own hands around your neck at the end,” Danni pointed out as she looked at Ellen’s neck, which bore no traces of the handprints she remembered from the hospital.

“Mm,” Ellen hummed. Her wince was subtle but revealing. She did not remember being strangled, she had been unconscious by then, but she remembered the bruising. She remembered waking up in a neck brace and being told she was lifted on a spinal board as well. She remembered asking Peter if she had stopped breathing. He said not.

“All this means,” Neil said as he leant across his desk and looked into Ellen’s thoughtful, almost faraway blue eyes. “Is that somebody who knows you is involved, Ellen. That is concerning for us all. Now, for an undercover cop it should be a short list, but you are not an ordinary undercover cop. You’re not like Peter here; people might recognise him and they’ve seen him about, but they don’t know his name and if he met them on the street he’d probably use a fake name just out of habit-”

“Too right mate,” Peter agreed with a nod. 

“You’re different, Ellen, because you were the boss. You’re well known at HQ, you’re well known in Homicide and in Sex Crimes and Drug Squad and Armed Robbery. Your undercover unit has worked with a lot of different branches over the years, and you’ve met a lot of police officers in that time…you’ve borne the brunt of your unit’s exposure. You kept them all very well hidden from the mainstream police force, but you did it by putting yourself in front of them.”

“That was my job,” Ellen said pointedly, as a small frown of misunderstanding dotted her brow. “I was responsible for their safety. Are you saying that was a mistake?”

“No, no, not at all,” Danni assured her. “We just mean that you are or were the most visible member of our team, perhaps the most visible member to come out of an undercover unit known by the most people across HQ. A lot of units always stuck close to Drug Squad or Vice. It means that if we’re looking for an insider, someone who could find out what your first name was, someone who potentially knew where you would be that night, assuming this was not a stranger who had to follow you from home to work to the park, then our potential list of persons of interest is long.”

“It’s not that long,” Ellen said. “It wasn’t common knowledge that I was undercover in that operation. The Sex Crimes team knew, a few people from Homicide who had just joined the team as a result of Kiera’s murder that morning had been briefed, and my own team from our unit knew; my broader team, including tech guys and admin.”

“I have to ask,” Neil said. “I know we’re sitting here with two of your former operatives, but Constables Piper and Stone I do not know as well. Are you sure-”

“That they had nothing to do with this?” Ellen asked with a raised brow and pert grimace. “Yes, I’m sure. Angie, Oscar Stone and myself have never had any problems professionally. I hired them both, Peter and I trained them, and we’ve been working with them for eight or nine years now. Or at least we were working with them…The point is I consider them friends and they’re almost happily retired now. I apologise if I mix up present and past tense, Neil, this is all still fairly recent for me.”

“I understand this adjustment,” he said. “But we’re glad to have you both on board.”

“So what’s the plan?” Peter asked. “Let’s go over that. I think we’ve pretty much established that the most likely scenario is that someone with a vendetta against Ellen, who could identify her for themselves, passed that information on to Kiera to pass on to others, presumably to distance themselves from whatever might happen next. Something went wrong. Either that person had second thoughts and killed Kiera to go after Ellen themselves, or this information really did land in the lap of someone who was willing to kill Kiera and then go after Ellen, all in the one day.”

“That’s a lot of rage,” Danni said with a bemused smirk. 

“I just don’t know if I inspire that much rage?” Ellen questioned. “It doesn’t sit right.”

“It would be a bloody good coincidence for Kiera to have found that one angry person too,” Peter said. “Unless whoever gave Kiera this information and whoever gave her this push also told her exactly where to post those advertisements, because they already knew someone who would get the job done was sitting there, waiting.”

“That is one rather sinister theory,” Danni said as she glanced at Neil, who nodded. “We’ve got someone pulling strings here and we just don’t know who it is. Three months, we’re no closer, so here is our plan. Both of you are seconded to Homicide-”

“Do you know how many times I’ve turned down offers to join Homicide?” Ellen asked as she sighed with mock-frustration. “And now I’m arbitrarily seconded?”

“I told you I’d get you here finally,” Neil said as he playfully winked at her. Ellen rolled her eyes as she and Peter both chuckled. 

“There are two components of our operation,” Danni continued professionally. “The first is just you, Ellen. You are hiding in plain sight. We want everyone to know that you’re back, that you’re on your feet and alive and back at work. We want people to assume that you believe the person who attacked you has been arrested; he just hasn’t been charged because of a lack of evidence, which is true enough. You’re in a safe house under surveillance at night, but during the day you’re in HQ, going about your business. You are free to come and go and do whatever you need to do in your private life, but be vigilant, take precautions, and try not to be alone outside of the safe house for long periods of time. Don’t go off-grid, don’t ignore your phone, because if we try to check in and we can’t contact you, we’re going to panic.”

“Got it,” Ellen said with a simple nod. “On the phone you told Peter that you don’t expect me to be solving murders, so what will I be doing?”

“We want you to be actively involved in investigating Kiera’s death,” Neil said. “Again, it goes to visibility. If you’re seen to be getting close to the person who killed Kiera and maybe the person who assaulted you…it could force something to happen.”

“I know I asked you last night, but I’m going to ask again,” Danni said. “Are you comfortable using yourself as bait?” 

“Yes,” Ellen said. “I’ve often been out there as bait when I was undercover. Mostly before I became the boss and hired you, Danni, so you’re not as familiar with that part of my past, but I’ve baited myself for serial killers before; I can manage this.”

“No one’s doubting your skills, Ellen,” Neil assured her. “I first met you seven-odd years ago, I know you and your reputation well enough, and I have zero experience working with undercover operatives like yourself and Peter in a professional, covert capacity, but I am certain that no one’s nerves, including yours, are made of steel.”

Ellen pressed her lips together as she thought about how to respond. She knew Neil and Danni both meant well, but she still could hear or feel what was not being said in the room. They were clearly concerned that she was going to have some kind of breakdown in light of the long service leave and the burnout that had preceded it. 

“I don’t know what I can say to reassure you,” Ellen said. “Other than to refer to my professional ethics and say that if I wasn’t prepared, if I didn’t feel qualified or well enough to be here, then I simply would not be here. Peter and I have discussed this at length. We’re willing to hide our relationship, we’re willing to be a part of this, and I want to be a part of this. I would rather be here to find this person, or these people, than to be in hiding, never knowing if the person who assaulted me, or who had me assaulted, was fully satisfied with the outcome given that I am currently in perfect health. I certainly won’t put Peter’s life at risk by the both of us living in that shadow.”

“I agree, obviously,” Peter said. “I don’t have to tell either of you that we’re fine.”

“No, we know,” Danni assured them both. “Okay, well, in addition to helping on the Kiera investigation, we’d like Ellen to also be involved in managing the undercover operation Peter and I will be involved in, with regard to finding out whether or not it’s plausible that Kiera’s murder was related to her involvement with drugs, particularly any drug deals at a higher level than the odd bit of cannabis for her mum.”

“You’ll be resuming your covers from the Lachlan Fraser operation?” Ellen asked.

“That seems to be the best approach,” Danni said. “There’s nothing to suggest our covers were ever blown, we’d barely had time to tell Lachlan that we weren’t going to be dealing with him after you pulled us off the case…he probably just assumed we would call eventually, because we’d been fairly persistent until then. He is also dead.”

“True,” Ellen said. “But if your cover was blown earlier he could have told someone. Who is your target? I remember you were both fairly certain he had connections.”

“We don’t want to step on the toes of the new Special Response to Drug Crimes Taskforce,” Neil said. “Reg Masters is running a tight ship as head of the CBD branches, and sitting in front of me are three officers who turned him down – repeatedly, I’m told – so I’m sure he would not appreciate it if they’re working on some of that information and up you all pop in the middle of their ops.”

“We’re not after the drugs,” Danni said. “We just need to know how deep Kiera was, and it would be a bonus if we can find a link back to Mac. There are two broad targets. First, her school friends, and that’s where you come in Mac, uh, Ellen sorry.”

“You can call me Mac, Danni,” Ellen assured her with a wry smirk. “I’ve been called Mac by my operatives and colleagues for more than ten years. I also just spent all weekend being called Mac by you, Angie and Oscar. Peter called me Mac all weekend as well, just so that it wasn’t weird for the others and so that they wouldn’t know about the relationship. Even Oscar’s mum calls me Mac. It’s absolutely fine.”

“I know,” Danni said with an apologetic frown. “But it just hit me when your sister came to visit in the hospital all those months back now…Amy calls you Ellen, your mum must as well, that’s who you are outside of the unit. I know Peter calls you Elle now, most of the time at least, not to mention Neil here and everyone professionally-”

“Danni, whatever happens to come out of your mouth when you’re addressing me is fine, you don’t need to apologise,” Ellen said, before adding, “As long as it doesn’t include the words bitch, frigid, cunt, Your Highness or Ice Queen; some of the memorable names that have tumbled out of other cop’s mouths over the years.”

“Ha,” Danni said on a laugh, as Neil grimaced and Peter smirked. “I think I can restrain myself, but I do really want to start calling you Ellen for this new chapter of our lives, so I’ll try my best. Anyway, Ellen, you’ll be doing the school visits and running the self-defence classes and talking with Kiera’s friends, that kind of thing. She was in Year 12, they’re heading into VCE territory, they’re stressed and scared but they have been less than forthcoming and their parents and the school has been very protective. What happened to Kiera has really scared that whole community.”

“You know I’m not great at speaking to children,” Ellen warned them. “You would be much better at that, Danni. What makes you think they’re going to talk to me?”

“They’re not children, they’re young adults, talk to them like adults and be yourself and they’ll respect you,” Danni said. “The bottom line is we need to get closer to them…these kids know something. An otherwise kind, good, law-abiding seventeen year old girl doesn’t get herself into drugs or making deals with murderous cops or whatever, without talking to at least one friend about it.”

“You said self-defence classes,” Ellen said with a thoughtful frown.

“Yes,” Neil replied. “The school is reluctant to allow police on-site anymore, it’s been a few months since Kiera’s murder and they’re trying to help the students move on; the principal and the parents of some of the key students we need to talk to have closed down all opportunities for us to revisit those initial interviews with Kiera’s friends. However, the school has agreed that in light of the grief and pressures their students are still trying to cope with, they will allow for police visitors to come in and give a series of talks or workshops to the seniors, I suppose to make the kids feel more at ease and to educate them on protective behaviours. It will allow for more informal conversations to be had between police and students. Could you do that?”

“I think so,” Ellen said. “The hope being that if any of them know something that they’re too afraid to talk about, they’ll confide in me.”

“Yes,” Danni said. “And if you need someone’s ass to kick, take Neil. If they see you taking down the Head of Homicide they’ll be severely impressed.”

Ellen laughed as Neil rolled his eyes and sat back in his chair, unimpressed. 

“What will you and Peter be doing, in the meantime?” Ellen asked. “Kiera’s mother?”

“We’ve always suspected Paula knows more than she’s told us,” Danni said, nodding. “We’d like you to help manage this part of the job. She doesn’t know Peter and I.”

“Has she been told that the man we suspect of being Kiera’s cannabis link has died?” 

“Yes,” Danni said with a wise smile. “She knows his name was Lachlan Fraser-”

“She didn’t react at all to that name,” Neil interrupted. “Gave us the straight face, but we’re almost certain that he was the supplier and that both herself and Kiera knew him quite well. Her supplies of cannabis have also dried up, and she’s been hospitalised several times in the last few months from serious seizures. No one can legally supply her with those drugs. At this stage it appears as though Kiera was the driving force in accessing them illegally; if the mother knows somewhere else to get it, she’s not making any efforts to do so. We’ve had her under low-level surveillance.”

“We’re going to take a risk,” Danni told them. “I want Peter and I to introduce ourselves under our old cover, under the names Lachlan knew us by, and to provide this woman with what she needs…pretending that Lachlan confided in us and told us about her situation before he died. We’ll pretend that we’ve lost a child too, so we won’t be asking the world in return. It will be better for her epilepsy and it will also hopefully earn her trust. We just need her to open up about her daughter, that’s all.” 

“Danni and Peter will move into a safe house just down the street from the Rudonikis home,” Neil said. “Danni will pretend to go to work each day and we want Peter to befriend the mother first. It’s not a high-risk assignment. In fact, I expect nothing much to come of it. The real aim of all this is to put you in the spotlight, Ellen.”

“Ah,” Ellen said with a broad, teasing grin as she looked to Peter’s wary grimace. “The spotlight! Just what every undercover cop lies awake at night dreaming about.”


	5. Chapter 5

FIVE

Danni watched Neil as he swiped his access card over the security patch beside the office door. The light on the patch turned from red to green and the sound of the locks turning signaled that he was free to enter. Danni entered behind him and shut the door, while the two uniformed officers sitting in the room both turned and stood. 

“Sit, sit,” Neil said as he waved them back down. One was Constable Novie Orr, a recent transfer from general duties, no older than twenty-five, who still looked like he couldn’t believe where he was. His partner was Senior Constable Fleur Jackson, who had been working with Homicide for the past two years. Danni had singled them out for the job because neither of them had ever worked with her old unit, and Fleur had seen Ellen around headquarters, but had never met her, never spoken to her, and there was nothing in either of their backgrounds to suggest otherwise. 

“How is it going?” Danni asked as she pulled up the third and final chair in the room and sat down. On the right hand side was a row of surveillance screens that revealed the interior of the safe house that she and Peter would be moving into the next day. All was quiet on that side of the room, Danni was comfortable that all of the cameras were in working order, and she quickly turned her attention to the left hand side of the room and the opposite row of screens, which was where Neil’s attention, and Fleur and Novie’s, was focused. 

Peter and Ellen were clearly visible in the small kitchen of Ellen’s safe house, both preparing dinner. The volume was off, but when Danni asked Novie to turn it on, he did. Their familiar voices were immediately clear.

‘-pack and how much to leave,’ Peter was saying while he cut vegetables. 

‘Leave a few things,’ Ellen said as she stood at the stove and turned the meat in the fry pan. ‘In case you get the chance to duck back here…and who knows how long you’ll actually be in this safe house for. It might only be a week.’

‘That’s wishful thinking,’ Peter said. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do during the day…pretend to be retired, I suppose.’

‘Sounds brutal,’ Ellen said in mock seriousness. Peter chuckled and shrugged.

‘I’d much rather be with you,’ he said as he abandoned the vegetables and wrapped her in his arms from behind. ‘In Queensland,’ he said. ‘On the beach.’ 

Ellen laid her back against his chest and hummed.

“We’ve had the volume off mostly,” Fleur said as they watched Ellen turn slightly in Peter’s arms. They shared a lingering kiss in the embrace, and when they parted to brush their faces together intimately Neil cleared his throat and looked away. Fleur continued, “It was pretty clear on the first day that they were trying to avoid talking about just about everything outside of the bedroom and bathroom, but it’s been a couple of days now and they’ve either forgotten or they don’t care.”

“It’s fine,” Danni said. “They haven’t forgotten, they’re too experienced for that.”

“Can I ask,” Neil said as he leant against the bench by the screens, next to Novie. He looked at Danni intently. “What was all that talk yesterday about not calling her Ellen in front of Constables Piper and Stone at their wedding, and why are they hiding their relationship from your old colleagues? If Angie and Oscar are both retired-”

“Oscar is still working under his original name,” Danni said. “And technically Ange is on leave, so it’s not so much that they’ve retired from the police. They are retired from undercover. Ellen and Peter are here on Covert Services business and don’t want to endanger them, especially given the risk that whoever exposed Ellen online through Kiera also has enough information on the rest of us; maybe they’re holding it back for now, but that’s not guaranteed. So it’s best that Angie and Oscar know nothing about this operation, and I’m sure they suspect that there is a romantic attachment between Pete and Elle, but neither of them has asked outright and Ellen and Peter haven’t announced it outright…it’s a stalemate. That’s what happens after years in undercover, Neil; you get paranoid and it becomes really hard to even talk to your friends about personal shit. Ellen and Peter are naturally very private people anyway.”

“But you know.”

“Well either I’m very nosy or I’ve been in the right place at the right time over the years, just in time to listen to them spill their guts. It doesn’t happen often.”

“If they’re very private people,” Novie said. “And if they’re as experienced in all this as you say, why are they so relaxed in this house full of cameras and microphones?”

“Because they’re as experienced as I say,” Danni replied pointedly. “They view this as part of normal life. Anyway, are all the cameras working, all the microphones?”

“Yep,” Fleur said efficiently. “From tomorrow Novie and I will balance the evening shifts, and you and Detective Mackenzie will be here during the day?”

“Correct,” Danni said. “Has anyone asked you about this yet?”

“Yeah,” Fleur said. “We’ve just said that we’re working on surveillance for the Rudonikis case, no big deal, no questions asked. It’s cool.”

“You say nothing of Mackenzie outside this room,” Neil instructed. “You say nothing of Peter Church, or this second safe house we’re all watching. No one must know it exists, and the address and phone number must remain strictly confidential.”

“Copy that, Inspector,” Fleur assured him with a nod, which Novie mimicked. “And if anyone starts asking too many questions about Detective Mackenzie or nosing around asking us what we’re doing or how close we are to her, we’ll let you know.”

“Good, thank you,” Neil said. “Also, when Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie is here, you say nothing to her of what you witness in that safe house, understood? For all intents and purposes that is her home, and what little privacy she does have within the confines of this room will be respected. Clear?”

“Yes Inspector,” Novie agreed. “We’re looking forward to working with her.”

“Good, you should be,” Danni said playfully as she grinned and gestured to the monitors. “Now, if everything is in order I need to go home to pack before I end up on one of these little screens as well. You two have your roster sorted?”

“Yes, I’m going to head home now as well,” Fleur said. They only really needed one person on surveillance at a time, and it was a long and tedious job that they would be sharing in a mixture of shorter split shifts.

“Okay Novie, it’s all you,” Danni said as she patted him on the shoulder. “Just cover your eyes if it gets to be too much. I’m sure they’ll be off to bed early tonight.”

He chuckled and shook his head. 

“Ah, I’m fine, Danni,” he said. “They’re in safe hands.”

“Good man,” she said as she said goodbye. Neil followed her out and Danni smirked at him over her shoulder when she realised as much. “Something else I can help you with, Inspector?”

“Lottie wanted me to ask you if now that your friend is married and you don’t need to practise hair anymore, if she’s not going to see you in the mornings anymore too.”

“Oh, has she missed me?” Danni asked, genuinely concerned and surprised. Neil stared at her with a plain, ‘obviously’, expression as he nodded. “Oh, sorry Neil! What day it, Wednesday? Um…I just assumed you wouldn’t want me imposing on your morning routine anymore.”

“Mate, you can braid hair! If I wasn’t paying the live-in nanny so much to look after Charlotte and Max day and night I’d be giving you a hair-braiding bonus.”

“It’s a tough life being a bachelor,” she mused. “I suppose I could drop by in the morning, and if it really is something she enjoys…I suppose the job I’m pretending to have while I’m in the safe house could involve me leaving home at seven…”

“Look, no pressure and I don’t want to make you feel guilty,” he assured her. “I know this isn’t in the job description. It’s just that my eight year old really likes you, she’s been asking me since Sunday if you’ll still be coming, and you know how shy she is normally at school, the anxiety she’s had…For the last month you’ve made her feel good about herself before she goes to school in the mornings. It’s helped, Danni.”

“I understand,” Danni said as she looked at him more seriously. “It’s a tough life being a widower when the kids are growing up and they miss mummy, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s the more accurate statement of my life,” he told her honestly. “The truth is I can’t do some of these little things that she needs. Can you please help?”

“Yes,” she said with a soft smile. “Barring disaster, I will be there at seven-thirty to do the little munchkin’s hair. Don’t tell her though, I’ll surprise her. Celia won’t mind?” she asked, speaking of the young live-in nanny who had been helping to raise Neil’s children since his wife died of an aggressive skin cancer not two years earlier. 

“No, she doesn’t mind a little extra free time in the mornings. She’s doing extra study this semester at university anyway, her teaching course. She’s going to classes during the day now the kids are both in school, she’s up late studying and doing assignments after the kids go to bed, and soon she’ll be going off on prac and having to be at school teaching all day…I am fully aware that she won’t be around forever and I might need to make some changes to my own routine down the track to manage that.”

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere,” Danni said with a teasing smirk. “Maybe it’s not a good thing if the kids get too attached to me, Neil. I’m just a little bit overqualified to be your replacement nanny.”

“Danni I would never even suggest it,” he assured her. He reached out and squeezed her hand as they stood in the quiet hallway outside the surveillance room. Danni’s green eyes searched his brown eyes for an explanation; he had never held her hand before, but she saw his eyes glistening with tears and she felt her heart break a little. Fleur could step out of the room down the hall at any moment, but Danni didn’t care. “It’s just Charlotte,” Neil said. “She’s growing up, she wants to be friends with you. She doesn’t seem to want to talk to Celia or me about school or friends or feelings, not the way she’s been nattering on in the morning with you. It’s like she’s a different little girl, Danni, she lights up around you. She must, uh, she must get it from me.”

“Neil,” Danni said softly as her breath caught in her throat. Had he really just said that? She could not believe it. No one had seriously come onto her for bloody years, thanks to her job in Covert Services. No one had wanted to touch her with a ten-foot pole once they knew what she did, and if she wasn’t in a position to tell someone what she did – which was almost all the time – then she had been the one with the pole, keeping any possibilities far away. Neil was suddenly very close. Not one metre.

“Sorry,” he said suddenly. His hand dropped away from hers and he looked down and then away. “Sorry Detective, that was out of line. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Neil wait,” Danni said before he could walk away. She pressed her lips together as he hesitated and looked back into her eyes. He did not look like the Head of Homicide at that moment; to Danni he just looked like a friend who was maybe a bit confused, and maybe a bit hopeful. Her heart hammered in her chest as she took a deep breath. “It wasn’t out of line,” she told him simply. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” 

She left first and she left quickly, hoping that confirmation of her own somewhat confused feelings had been clear enough to reassure him and also just subtle enough to save her soul if he changed his mind. 

*

Peter took long, deep breaths to calm his racing heart as he separated his body from Ellen just long enough to lie down on his side in bed and pull her towards him. Ellen had collapsed onto her stomach and was panting, with her downturned face obscured by her dark hair and the long, slender arms crossed under her forehead. Peter could tell by the sound and pace of her breathing she was about to start crying and he did not want that, not on their last night together for a while – that was the problem, of course – so he hushed her quietly and wrapped one arm around her back. His other arm took hold of her nearest elbow to shift her a few inches closer, until she could roll up into his side for an intimate cuddle. 

“I’m really glad there aren’t listening devices in this room,” Peter quipped when he felt her respond. Her damp face nestled into his neck, she wrapped her arms around his neck and waist, and their legs tangled. “Or cameras,” he added when he realised that the lamps on either side of the bed were on and they were not even covered by a sheet. Peter didn’t want to move just to accomplish that feat either. It didn’t matter. 

“Mm,” Ellen hummed in agreement. She wasn’t laughing, but she breathed more deeply and settled against him, not crying either as Peter massaged large, firm circles and figure eights over her back, from her shoulder to her hip. 

“You okay?” Peter asked softly when he felt her breath hitch unexpectedly. She shut her eyes and nodded as her hand settled on his chest and the greying hair that covered his heart. Peter held her hand there. He could feel her own heart hammering against his side, through her soft breast. She sniffled and he sighed. 

“I’m sorry,” she said as she mistook his sigh for one of disappointment. “I think I just felt very in-love for a minute there.”

“Just for a minute?” Peter asked immediately. Ellen laughed genuinely then, and she lifted her head to settle on the pillow beside him. Her blue eyes were filled with tears and there were tear tracks on her cheeks still visible in the lamplight, but her smile was genuine as she brushed them away on her own. 

“No, not just for a minute,” she admitted. Her cheeks flushed as she looked at him warily, and Peter grinned. 

They had been intimate for a year eight years earlier, just casual sex mostly, carried out in secret in cheap motel rooms across the city in between undercover jobs. It had ended once the old boss had discovered the affair, and it had taken another seven years before Peter got the courage up to ask her out – properly, this time – and they had started dating. They hadn’t had sex again for the first time until Ellen self-reported her concussion to be mostly healed, on their third night in the Northern Territory just three months ago. 

Yet Ellen still looked at Peter like it was new, like she was embarrassed to talk to him about those feelings that she was not used to expressing, and sometimes he thought it was because she felt inferior on a personal level. He had been in love before – she hadn’t – and he had been engaged twice to two women who frankly were a lot better at expressing their emotions than Ellen ever would be. That didn’t mean she wasn’t passionate, or that she didn’t love him deeply. Peter knew both of those things better than most, and he always had, even in the years when they weren’t together, when they were just getting by as friends by default. 

“It’s okay,” he told her as his grin softened to a kind smile. “I feel it too, love.”

“I like when you call me that,” she admitted with a shy smile. He nodded and pulled her waist closer into his. 

“You know what I like?” he asked. His clear blue eyes twinkled and gave him away. She playfully grimaced, raised a skeptical and bemused brow, and silently ordered him to tell her. Peter grinned and said, “I like when you get that really deep moan on and say ‘oh love, oh fuck’…nice.”

“Oh stop it!” Ellen said on a laugh as her cheeks turned a brighter shade of pink. Peter chuckled but did not let her go as she tried to wriggle out of his arms, mortified. She laughed harder and buried her face in his chest instead. 

“I told you, Elle, it’s a good thing this room isn’t wired for sound!” 

“You are such a charmer, aren’t you?” she asked as she raised her head and grinned at him. He rolled onto his back and pulled her partially on top of him. She ducked her head to rest her lips on his chin as their eyes connected and they just stared at each other for long, quiet seconds. “You know what I think we should do with this case?”

“What?” he asked. He combed his fingers through her soft, chocolate brown hair, pushing thick strands off her face and tucking them behind her ears or directing them back over her head. 

“I think to save this dragging on forever – because I genuinely do not want to end up in Homicide long term, and neither do you – that if nothing happens in two weeks, we just out me the same way Kiera did. We follow her pattern, post new ads and video on the Internet, in the same chat rooms we know she used to out me the first time…and see what happens. It would be faster than going through all this, don’t you think?”

“Much faster, and much more dangerous,” Peter said with a wise smirk. 

“The thing is,” Ellen continued. “Even if I get a teenager to talk to me about their dead friend’s innermost secrets – and frankly I have a higher chance of being slaughtered in this house than that – it’s really doubtful that Kiera would have used names. We might get confirmation of a situation that we already are almost wholly certain of, but it won’t help us to find the actual person or people responsible.”

“It might. If Kiera was threatening to go to the cops and that’s why she was killed, whether this guy was a cop or not, she could have told a friend as insurance.”

“Insurance? She was seventeen, Peter. Would it even enter her head?”

“That depends on how many movies she’s watched where someone is killed but then magically an envelope turns up with a friend or a solicitor with all their secrets in it.”

“I guess,” Ellen said. She relaxed her head back down on his chest as it rose and fell with each breath. His hands through her hair and on her back were tender and relaxing, and there was no sign that he found her weight constricting. “Either way,” she added. “I’m going to raise it with Danni. If this was my op, it’s what I’d do.”

“If this wasn’t you, though, if this was Danni and you were running the op, would you be so quick to out her on Internet chat rooms for the second time in four months? Or would you perhaps try a more reserved plan first. Think about what it would mean for her future. That information doesn’t go away. Your information has not gone away.”

Ellen hesitated and lifted her head to look into his wise, serious blue eyes once more. 

“Oh,” she said. The truth was, she would be more cautious for Danni. “Good point.”

“Please don’t be so reckless with your safety,” Peter told her in a gentle voice as he continued to comb her hair and hold her to him. “I can’t lose you too, Ellen.” He chuckled sadly and added, “Why do you think we haven’t talked about marriage, eh? In twenty years I’ve lost two fiancées, senselessly, to criminal shitheads, and for the last ten of those years you’ve been…my best friend. If something happened to you I would not be moving on again. Please, please do not be reckless here on your own.”

“I won’t,” Ellen said. Tears had filled Peter’s eyes and his voice had cracked. She propped herself up on the mattress to hold herself more properly above him, as her free hand stroked his cheek and the golden-brown-grey stubble along his jaw. “You know me, sweetheart,” she said as she pressed her lips together in a mildly teasing smile. “I talk a good game, but I’m not going to do anything outside of the rule book, and if we do have to go down that route…well like you said, my information is still out there, that video, my name, my face…the consequences for us won’t change.”

“Unless you’re killed.”

“I could be killed with what we’re doing now anyway,” she said. “I’m sorry, Peter.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I don’t know what I’ve done to someone in the past to warrant this, whether it’s another cop or, or someone outside of the police who somehow found out about my original name, and my address? And to use a seventeen year old girl? For months now I’ve been going over all my old files in my head, what I can remember, and I just-”

“Homicide have been doing that more effectively, with your actual files,” Peter reminded her with a knowing smile. He urged her to relax her now-shaking arm that was still holding her weight above him, as he rolled onto his side and allowed her to lie down beside him also. “It’s not your fault,” he told her again as they faced each other. “After this, Elle, Mac, we are going to have a wonderful life together, right?”

“Right,” she whispered. She sucked in a quick, emotional breath and rested her hand over his heart again. “Let’s make love one more time. I love you Peter, I always will.”

“Me too,” he told her as he cupped her face and leant forward for a kiss. “Always.”


	6. Chapter 6

SIX

Danni could not help her expectant grin as she stood on the front stoop of Neil’s house and rang the doorbell. She heard it echoing throughout the rooms ahead and Neil quickly called out, “I’ll get it, it’s work! You two keep eating!” It was fair to assume that no matter how old Charlotte and Max got they would never be allowed to rush to answer the front door of the Head of Homicide’s home.

Neil opened the door with a smile as Danni looked up at him and tipped her head to one side. 

“Good morning,” she told him in a soft voice. “Am I interrupting breakfast?”

“Something like that. Come on in.” He held the door open and gestured for her to enter ahead of him. 

Danni’s heels made a telling noise on the polished floorboards and as soon as she began walking towards the kitchen at the back of the narrow home, Charlotte squealed. Her footsteps had been recognised, and Danni knew that Charlotte had probably also looked to the clock. The girl could tell time, and up until the previous Friday, Danni’s early-morning arrival had been predictable and reliable. Not even a week had passed.

Danni got to the kitchen in time to see both children dressed in their school uniforms, sitting at the kitchen bench, but Charlotte was already halfway to wriggling and jumping off her stool. Her smile was wide and toothy, though two of her bottom teeth and one of her top teeth were all missing or halfway to being replaced. 

“Danni!” she exclaimed. Her long, thick, light brown hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail that bounced around her shoulders. She pulled herself to a stop half a metre in front of Danni – a deliberate, suddenly shy restraint – and looked up at her with wide green eyes and a round, fair face full of freckles. “You came back!” she said. There was a mixture of hopefulness and wonder about the way she looked at Danni, as though she had magically appeared and her father had nothing to do with it. 

“I’m told that you’ve requested my hairdressing services,” Danni told her smartly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a five-year-old redhead sliding off his own stool to come up to her. “Hello Max,” she said, surprised when he almost hurried to her and gave her a hug. Danni leant over slightly and rubbed his back as she looked over her shoulder at Neil, who just shrugged and began washing up the breakfast dishes. 

“Oh my God yes!” Charlotte said in response to Danni’s claim. 

“Hey,” Neil said warily with his back turned. “What have I said about the ‘Oh my God’ bit? You go to a Catholic school; if you say that at school you’ll be in trouble.”

“I don’t say it at school daddy,” she assured him. “Plus, you say Christ all the time. That’s just as bad as ‘oh my God’!”

“Oh my God!” Max declared loudly as he stepped back from Danni and spread his arms skywards. “Christ! Thanks daddy!” 

“Ahh…I have no comeback that does not involve those words this early in the morning!” Neil said in jest. He laughed as Charlotte giggled. While their three bedrooms were upstairs, Max ran down the hall in the direction of the nanny’s downstairs room, all the while cursing for fun. “Lottie,” Neil continued. “Ask Danni nicely-” He did not get to finish. Charlotte turned straight back to Danni, grabbed onto Danni’s nearest hand with both of hers and did exactly what her father wanted. 

“Please, please, please will you do my hair today?”

“I think I can fit it in,” Danni assured her with a wink. “Back up on the stool. Have you finished breakfast?”

“No,” Charlotte said as she tugged the ponytail out of her hair and simultaneously climbed back up to her seat at the kitchen bench. Neil pushed her bowl of cereal back towards her. “It’s super soggy now but,” she said. “Daddy, can you put a piece of toast in for me instead, please?”

“Sure darling,” he said. The bread was right by the toaster because he had been about to make his own breakfast anyway; it could wait another two minutes. 

“Thank you,” she said politely as she happily swung her legs off the end of the stool.

Danni put her handbag up on the counter and retrieved the brush, comb, a packet of bobby pins and a small box of hair ties that she had taken to carrying around with her.

“Okay, what do we want today?” Danni asked. “We could do two braided plaits, or one, or just the top half, or two on the top half pulled back together-”

“Did your friend Angie look pretty at the wedding?” Charlotte asked. Danni nodded and retrieved her phone from her handbag. “Oh, photos!” Charlotte squealed. It got Neil’s attention and he leant across the bench to also look, as Danni scrolled through photographs. They were perhaps the only photographs any of them had ever taken of one another, and Danni did feel more protective of her phone knowing that she had pictures of Angie, Cameron, Ellen and Peter – and herself – right there for all to see. 

“This is Angie,” Danni said as she scrolled through photos of the bride and her hair. 

“Oh, she’s so pretty!”

“She’s very kind and clever and brave too,” Danni countered, aware that at just eight years old Charlotte already felt like she wasn’t pretty, when Danni knew that the kid was adorable with all her freckles, cheerful face and bright green eyes. She looked a lot like her mother, and perhaps that made it tough on Neil when she doubted herself.

“Is there a photo of you?” Charlotte asked. 

“Ahuh,” Danni said, scrolling through until she found a picture that Peter had taken of herself, Angie and Ellen, followed by a selfie with the three of them, and two selfies with just herself and Ellen, one serious and one pulling funny faces. 

“Those photos are definitely not safe for work,” Neil told her, as Charlotte gushed. 

“I know, but they’re rare and precious and I haven’t had the chance to back them up,” Danni told him, just as Max huffily shouted from down the hall, ‘Celia is doing my hair, Lottie! So there!’

“You mean your Ronald McDonald hair!” Charlotte yelled as she turned in her stool. 

“It is not!” he yelled. “It’s adorable! Everybody says so!”

“Oi,” Neil said to Charlotte softly. “Would you be calling it Ronald McDonald hair if your mum was here with her curly red hair?” He raised his eyebrows pointedly and Charlotte clamped her mouth shut. “If you’re not going to sit quietly and politely to let Danni do your hair then you can just settle for a ponytail. Understood?”

“Yes, sorry dad,” Charlotte said under her breath as she sighed and turned back. Neil and Danni shared a smile before Neil turned his attention back to the toaster. He spread butter and vegemite on one slice for his daughter and handed it to her, before he put his own bread into the compact machine. Danni rested a soothing hand on Charlotte’s shoulder and gave it a subtle squeeze, before asking her again how she wanted her hair. “Two plaits please,” she mumbled. She wiped her eyes and took a shaky, anxious breath as Danni stood behind her and parted her hair. 

“It’s okay,” Danni said. “Deep breaths.”

“Yep,” she said. “Sorry daddy,” she said again. “Can you take me to school today?”

“Honey, I would love to but I have to work,” he told her on a sigh, as he buttered his own freshly made toast. “Celia is going to take you as normal, okay? Once Danni finishes your hair she and I have to leave. I’m sorry too.”

*

“Augh,” Neil huffed as he got out of his car an hour later. Danni had followed him in her own car and they parked near to each other in the underground garage. She was quickly beside him as they walked towards the entrance to police headquarters. “Honestly, those kids are gonna kill me. I feel so guilty, Danni.”

“You were lucky to escape without tears this morning I think,” Danni said. “I don’t have kids myself, but I’m pretty sure feeling guilty is par for the course.”

“I suppose,” he said on a sigh. “I used to feel guilty when I worked, but it wasn’t the same, I knew Eva was there…sometimes I really wonder why I took this promotion.”

“Why did you?” Danni asked. She quickly held up her hands as they walked and added, “And you can tell me that it’s none of my business if you want, but I’ve wondered too, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Eva wanted me to,” Neil said. “She was sick by the time the opportunity arose about four years ago now, and of course the reason it arose was because Bill Hollister was killed…By then we knew that Eva wasn’t going to get better, but she knew how much I’d wanted this job and what it meant to me, and we both knew the extra money would be really important for us…she promised that we would make it work. We did, of course, and I took some time off after she died, but I just can’t help thinking that the kids aren’t going to ask for dad to take them to school for many more years.”

“Maybe one day a week you could?” Danni suggested. Neil looked at her curiously and she held her hands up again. “Sorry, none of my business. I told you I’m nosy.”

“No I…I don’t mind, Danni. It’s not a bad idea. Maybe if it was something regular I could schedule that.”

“Yeah, and maybe you end up being twenty minutes late for the odd morning meeting,” she said with a shrug. “Who cares, right? I know all of us would understand, and if the higher-ups don’t then that’s their problem. One of your kids is a little stress-muffin, and if Lottie is withdrawing and if she feels like she can’t talk to anyone it’s probably because she is now old enough to understand that the people she wants to talk to most aren’t accessible to her…and it won’t get better on its own, Neil, and now I am closing my big fat mouth because I am way out of line, Inspector.”

“No, it’s fine,” Neil said on a chuckle. “I uh, it’s good to get a woman’s perspective.”

“I have no experience raising kids, so the main benefit of talking to me as a woman is that I put more words together in sentences than any man you’d try to have this conversation with. If I was a man, I’d say, ‘you seem to be doing all right to me, boss’.”

“That’s about what everyone tells me,” Neil admitted as they stepped into the elevator. Danni pressed the button and leant back against the wall, eyes shut. “Are you ready for today?” Neil asked her. 

“Yeah, no worries,” she said without opening her eyes. “All we’re doing today is moving in and introducing ourselves to a few neighbours, Paula Rudonikis included. It will be a pretty boring few days for Ellen as well; she’s not due at the school until Monday, though I’m sure she’ll be busy preparing and watching the two of us. I’ve got her briefing package ready to go, with all of Kiera’s friend’s names, records of their interviews, their photographs, things like that-”

“You’re thoroughly prepared,” Neil assured her. Danni opened her green eyes and looked at him cautiously. 

“I hope so,” she said. “This is all very backwards. They both outrank me.”

“They trust you though,” Neil said. “And you have the photographs on your phone to prove it.”

Danni nodded. She hoped that was true. She just didn’t want to let them down. 

*

Ellen knew she had startled Neil later that evening when she knocked on his open office door and saw him hurriedly put a photo frame back in his desk drawer. 

“Sorry,” she said. She winced as she held her folder up in surrender. “I was hoping for a quiet word before we both head home. It’s been difficult to get you on your own.”

“Come in, it’s fine,” he said. “I don’t get time on my own if I’m not asleep.” 

Ellen chuckled softly and walked into his office, closing the door behind her. Neil stood briefly to gesture for her to sit, and once she sat, he sat again too. Ellen smiled at his manners. She positioned her briefcase against the chair leg on the floor, and laid her briefing papers in her lap. 

“It’s nice to see you’ve left the surveillance room,” Neil observed. Ellen nodded. 

“Constable Orr has turned up for the evening shift, and Danni and Peter are still out walking the streets anyway. When they return, Constable Orr will have the pleasure of watching all three of us tonight, it seems. He’s a nice, young man. He had the presence of mind not to talk to me about my own safe house situation, so I like him.”

“Good,” Neil said with a laugh. “What can I do for you? How are Danni’s notes?”

“Excellent,” Ellen assured him. “I actually wanted to talk to you without Danni and Peter here, because there is one thing missing from this compendium and we haven’t spoken about it. I think we should. At least, I need you and Danni to both be aware.”

“Aware of what, exactly?” Neil asked as he sat back in his ergonomic chair and clasped his hands together on the desktop.

“Plan B,” Ellen said. “If the vendor and-or purchaser of my personal information really does have a vendetta against me, if they frequent those chat rooms to participate or observe, then they might be encouraged by more recent video footage released as proof of life. And we will have plenty of it, thanks to my current living situation.”

“That’s your Plan B?” Neil asked. “To put more footage of yourself on the Internet?”

“It’s a straightforward set-up. We’d monitor the chat room, contribute in character. If someone arranged to purchase this information from Kiera, killed her, and then acted on the information once before, they’ll do it again. The man had to have thought I was dead when he left me that night in the rain. He stuffed up and he knows it.”

“Sure,” Neil said. “That’s all possible. But if the person who filmed you the first time sees it, if we’re correct in assuming they know you as a cop, then they’ll know that the footage is coming from other cops. Whoever’s behind this is not stupid, Ellen.”

“So we antagonize them, rub it in their faces, that could be just as effective,” Ellen said. “That’s what I’m doing here anyway, right? We might need to push, Neil, that’s all I’m saying. Parading me around HQ and Kiera’s school might not be enough. We can’t assume that they are still here or close to me – my whole unit has disbanded – but it’s highly likely that they are still in those chat rooms. We can work out the finer details later if we need to. I just want you and Danni to be aware that it’s an option.”

“The updated info would have to be offered in the same way as Kiera,” Neil said. “Your address for cash. We can’t just put the address of the safe house out there; we’d have all the crazies coming after you. Even introducing a middle man is risky, Ellen.”

“I know, but me being here is risky too. It won’t change the outcome of all this.”

“You said you and Peter have spoken thoroughly,” Neil said. “Is he aware?”

“Peter Church has been in the police for twenty-six years,” Ellen replied. “Nearly nineteen of those years have been spent in undercover. He’s aware all right.”

“How are you both coping with that?”

“It’s just the uncertainty, really,” she said. Her brow furrowed as she pressed her lips together. “Of time and of what might happen. You’ll talk to Danni about this? She won’t enjoy hearing it from me. We are all doing a terrific job of not talking about the end point. My thinking is, if this soft approach doesn’t work, if this is going to happen for me anyway, then let’s go in hard and get these bastards and just get it done.”

“I must admit…I had the same idea a few weeks ago,” Neil said. “I’ve spoken with Danni about it, and you’re right, she didn’t react well when I suggested it.”

“And I understand why, but I don’t want to linger,” Ellen said softly and seriously as she looked into his eyes. “I don’t want weeks to become months in that house and I don’t want Peter and I in that situation long-term…I don’t want to languish, Neil.”

“I will not let that happen, Ellen,” Neil said. “I know how important it is to your future that we find out who was behind this and who did this to Kiera and yourself, and we are going to do our very best. We’re going to do everything we can before we get to Plan B and air more footage of an undercover cop who is already in strife. That was the conclusion that Danni and I came to. We hope it won’t be necessary.”

“I’m sure it won’t,” Ellen replied with as reassuring a smile as she could muster. “Great minds think alike, eh? Are you heading home soon?”

“Very soon,” he answered with a hopeful smile. “You?”

“I’m having dinner with my mother and sister. I haven’t seen them since before Peter and I went away, so my sister hasn’t seen me since I was in hospital half-comatose.”

“Sounds fun,” Neil said. He watched Ellen stand and gather her things. “Ellen,” he added. “Danni’s feeling this pressure. She’s going to try hard not to let you down.”

“She’s never let me down,” Ellen said with a kind smile. She leant against the back of her chair and asked suddenly, “Do you like her, Neil? From one friend to another?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said. He chewed on his bottom lip. “I just don’t know if it’s too soon. Eva hasn’t been gone for two years yet, and Max really doesn’t remember his mum but Lottie’s up and down. They’re the most important people in my life, they have to come first, and I don’t want to overstep a line with Danni or to have her feel like I’m just after any old woman to replace a dead wife and a mother…it’s a big ask.”

“Well, I wouldn’t start off by calling her old,” Ellen said with a bemused smirk, as Neil scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Okay,” Ellen continued. “Here’s some advice for you. Are you aware that when your predecessor was killed, he and I were dating?”

“Yeah, the whole office knew about you and Hollister,” Neil said with a cheekier smile as he looked at her. Ellen’s gaze remained serious, focused and thoughtful. 

“I wasted three years after that,” she said. “It probably only took six months for me to look at Peter and feel the same pang I’d had for him all those years ago, when we spent a year flouting the rules and when being together in any real sense was a definite impossibility. But even when those feelings returned after Bill’s death, I didn’t act on them. I told myself, ‘no, it’s too soon’. I thought Bill had changed me, or that he would expect something different, or that I was meant to be a different person because he died. I wanted so badly to reach out to Peter but I talked myself out of it. I’d been talking myself out of it for years before Bill and I began dating because I was in a position of authority, and I kept talking myself out of it for years after Bill died.”

“You and Peter had an affair ten years ago?”

“Yes. The point is…given where we are now, I should not have waited so long to act. I was ready, I knew I wanted a better relationship with Peter than the one we’d had, and not doing anything about it for all that time was devastating for even just my own health. Now I’m thirty-seven, Peter’s forty-six, he probably won’t get the children I know he’s always wanted, and just look at this mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

“You’re saying I should ask her out,” Neil said. “I’ve got two kids, Ellen. That’s big.”

“Danni likes children,” Ellen pointed out, though it should have been obvious to him. “She might even like a child herself one day. There’s nothing wrong with giving it a go, trust me. Just don’t hold it against her professionally, all right? It’s not nice.”

“I wouldn’t,” Neil said. “Thanks for being so honest. It’s refreshing, actually.”

“Yes well,” Ellen replied on a sigh. She blushed and glanced skywards, before staring at him directly. “If now’s not a good time to talk then when is, right? Try learning that the hard way! But bottom line, no one can tell you when you’re ready to move on after your partner dies. Only you know that, and if you know it now, don’t ignore it. Also…no matter what happens in the future, please do not hurt my friend.”

“I know you’ve got a lot of things to worry about,” Neil replied, fully aware that those last six words was her real bottom line. “So I promise that needn’t be one of them.”


	7. Chapter 7

SEVEN

“So, this is the place Kiera died,” Danni said as she and Peter sat down on a bench in the small, exposed, suburban park. Unlike the park where they had been conducting surveillance three months earlier, there was not the same bushland feel. There was no untamed scrub, no bends in paths that offered plenty of blind spots and coverage for someplace to hide, and it definitely did not have the same isolated feel; there were houses across the street that directly overlooked every inch of flat, green grass and the aged, faded children’s play equipment that felt like it had been dumped in the middle.

It was dark, but the park was well-serviced by the streetlights around its perimeter. 

“It’s more like an oval than a park,” Peter said, voicing what Danni was thinking.

“I guess that’s what it is,” Danni said. “If you came here for a jog in the morning, you’d just have to run around the perimeter in circles. There’s not a lot of shade.”

“I reckon they had a shade cloth over the equipment once,” Peter said as he gestured to the poles. “It was probably vandalised or ruined in a storm, never been fixed.”

“Mm,” she agreed. “I still find it very unbelievable that no one saw anything that morning. I mean, look around Peter. We could have at least two dozen people watching us now from three or four different angles. All the neighbours can see us in this park. I know Kiera was assaulted early in the morning, before sunrise, but no one reported even seeing a shadow, and they all heard nothing.”

“They’re either all telling the truth or this is a tight-lipped little community,” Peter mumbled as he leant back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. “We’ll figure it out,” he assured her. “Have you been involved in questioning anyone in the area?”

“Do you think I’d have moved myself into a house just down the street if I had?” Danni asked with an incredulous laugh, though they continued to speak in soft voices and look around them every so often as they talked. It was good to get some fresh air in the evening, it was terrific not to be stuck in the safe house. 

“Just checking,” Peter teased as he looked around to ensure they were alone. 

“No. Barry and Hayden were the original lead detectives on this case. I didn’t involve myself with the door-knocking because obviously that mostly happened before our unit closed, and before you and Ellen even left…before I even properly began in Homicide. What I have been involved with, in addition to getting qualified with normal cases, is going through ten years of undercover files. It’s a lot of boxes.”

“Elle’s ten years haven’t been the same as my eighteen years were though,” Peter said. “You’ve probably only got four or five years…the first year after she took over from Bernie she worked a few jobs, but after that it was really rare. No one can be after her for a job she was involved in if they never saw her involved in it.”

“I know, but I still had to start at the most recent and work my way back. It’s all locked up at work, safe and sound. Ellen and I are the only people who know the combination to the extra padlock I added to the cabinet. She’s going to be able to get through some of it a lot faster than me. We also checked whether her name was on any arrest warrants for people who had been released from prison in the last year or two, and nothing came up. I know the other day Neil probably made it sound like she’d unnecessarily exposed herself in the job over the years, but she really hasn’t. Ellen’s been as careful as the rest of us, within the confines of her more public job-”

“I know that Danni!” Peter said in a slight huff as he resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“I just mean to assure you that her name isn’t on our case file arrest warrants I’ve trawled through so far; those always lead back to whatever branch we were helping out, Drug Squad or Homicide. Her name isn’t on anything legal or official that the perps have a right to access. They’d have to get that information on her another way.”

“We don’t even know if this is an old perp, or another cop, or a random stranger who took a liking,” Peter said. “He licked her face while she was unconscious, for fuck’s sake. All we know is that someone is either really pissed off with her, or they’re just having fun, and I’m not sure which version of a psychopath is more preferable, yet.”

“Is there ever a preferable version?” Danni asked with an amused grin. Peter chuckled and shook his head in agreement. “Anyway,” Danni continued softly. “You’re right, and so far we have nothing. Ellen was right when she said that there just isn’t much in her history to inspire that kind of rage, and it must be either very recent rage, or rage that’s been building for a long time. My gut feeling is that somebody has planned this. They’ve planned to film her, to use Kiera to expose her, to bait her, either to kill her or to have her killed, to make it look like something else. I’m really worried, Pete.”

“We all are,” he mumbled, deep in thought as he looked at the play equipment. “At the end of the day, it was her decision to come back. This job, it’s who we are, I agreed, but I am fucking terrified,” he hissed. He stared into her eyes pointedly. 

“You hide it well.”

“I have to. We can’t talk about this shit in the house if she’s listening.”

“I have no objections to going for a walk like this every night and setting up a routine where we sit in this park and talk,” Danni said. “If someone did see what happened to Kiera, it might even be useful for us to be sitting out here; we could be approached or we could get to know the neighbours that do sticky-beak out their windows after all.”

“That was my thinking,” Peter said as he again looked around him. “It feels quiet here even though we’re surrounded. Everyone’s very securely in their homes.”

“Probably all still freaked out by what happened,” Danni said. “I’ve seen the autopsy report now, and the photographs, and that poor kid didn’t stand a chance. I’m surprised that she held on for the few hours that she managed in hospital.”

“If it was the same person who assaulted Elle, he was strong,” Peter reminded her. “Fast, fit, and committed.”

“Yeah, committed to making us all think this was connected to the park case,” Danni huffed. “It worked for a few days too. Just enough time for any tracks to be covered. What do you want to do about Paula?”

“She seemed nice enough,” Peter said. “I don’t want to drag it out, and ethically and for her health we shouldn’t drag it out either. Now that we’ve introduced ourselves I’ll drop by again tomorrow with some weed and the story about Lachlan, after you go to work. That should brighten up her Friday.”

“Well her living area is under surveillance so we’ll be watching.” Danni looked at him and offered a small smile when she saw his eyes skirting around in the dim light. “And she’s not the only one under surveillance,” she added. “We’ll all be fine, Pete.”

“The panic button in the bedroom is a nice touch,” Peter said, no longer talking about Paula Rudonikis. “I just hope it’s not necessary.”

“Don’t worry,” she said as she gave his arm a squeeze and stood to stretch. It was getting cold, they should head back and have some dinner, and possibly an early night. She had to get up early to go to Neil’s and then to work as usual, anyway. 

Peter sighed as he also stood and looked around one last time. He knew objectively Ellen would be fine in the house alone, she was safe and she would cope. He was the one freaking out because he wasn’t there. As far as Peter was concerned, the sooner they established that Kiera’s mother knew nothing and couldn’t help them, the better.

*

Ellen yawned as she opened the front door to the safe house and let herself inside, with her briefcase in one hand and a small box of her own unit’s old undercover files tucked under her other arm and balanced against her hip. She kicked the door shut behind her and quickly disarmed the alarm with the fingers still holding onto her briefcase, before turning to flick the bolted deadlock across. 

She tried not to think about the fact that Constable Orr was probably watching her. She walked down the hallway to the back of the house, quickening her steps as the box began to slip from her hip. She dropped it onto the tiny dining table just in time and rested her briefcase on one of the two chairs. From the briefcase, she pulled a laptop and set it up beside the box. If she had to live in a fishbowl and remain focused, she was going to make them all watch her work late into the night. 

Ellen also retrieved her phone from her bag, then left her work set up where it was to retrieve an apple from the nearby fridge. Her mother Eve and sister Amy had fed her at their home, but she was still hungry. She munched on the crunchy red apple as she walked into the bathroom and turned the shower on, on her way to the bedroom to then gather an armful of pyjamas. She took great pleasure in shutting the bathroom door afterwards, and she smiled at herself in the mirror as she put the half-eaten apple on the vanity and began to undress, finally alone.

Ellen really was not sure what to think about the situation in which she found herself, both personally and professionally. Her reaction varied, often over the course of a single day. As she stepped beneath the hot water and turned her face upwards into the steady stream, she tried to sift through some of her stronger feelings at that particular moment. It was a long, mixed list, as always. 

She was still confused as to why she had been targeted and not one of her operatives, who frankly had all been doing a far more dangerous job than her for years. Ellen had pissed people off over the years, of course she had, criminals and mostly asshole male cops alike, but enough for them to try to kill her? As opposed to Peter, or Angie?

She was also frustrated by the black spots that lingered in her memory, obscuring possibly important facts about her assault and the days immediately before and after, which might have helped to ease that confusion. Peter told her it didn’t matter, but what if it did? The answers felt just out of reach and she was disappointed in herself.

She was also glad to be back at work because it felt familiar and she felt useful and visible, she was being respected by her peers once more, but she also deeply resented and feared her own presence. Notwithstanding the fear for her safety or her life, Ellen could almost tangibly feel the dark grey tendrils of burnout still flickering around the edges of her mental to-do list. They threatened to tear it up with a loud Fuck This. 

Ellen almost felt like she was the same person in a different body, or she was in the same body but had a different mind. Something had shifted and she wasn’t sure what exactly. She felt uncomfortable wearing suits again and wanted to return to the afternoons she had spent curled up in casual clothes in a hotel armchair, reading novels she hadn’t read since high school and dragging lazy fingers through her hair. She could not remember feeling so relaxed, even when she had been in high school.

She missed Peter and the nights he would step into showers just like the one she was currently in, and they would wash each other’s hair and laugh and kiss and make love, sometimes in the shower and sometimes once they’d managed to tumble their still-damp bodies onto a softer surface. The last three months had been like a honeymoon and her body still ached for him. She wanted to make love with him immediately and she couldn’t. He was in a safe house with Danni. Her heart felt heavy and her brain dulled. Reviewing old files that night would distract her, even though sleep was best.

Of course, Ellen was also grateful for the peace and quiet of the safe house, and the small amount of distance she did now have from her new partner. It was temporary, it would not be for long and that was what they both desperately wanted, but she had still been alone for the majority of her adult life. She had felt alone for even longer, and not feeling like that anymore at the age of thirty-seven was still an adjustment.

Instead, Ellen now felt keenly that she was not alone. She felt Peter’s happiness as easily as her own, and his own fear and confusion and hope for their future was there alongside hers, entwined with hers in her own thoughts. Good and bad, positive and negative; it felt as though their relationship could scarcely be separated from either despite them both obviously wanting to hold onto only the good. For months they had tried to inspire confidence in each other with a fearless ‘it will be all right’ attitude, whenever it was required, after Peter’s nightmares or on her bad burnt-out days, or during discussions about their return to the city and to work, but it was hard to be confident and fearless. It would perhaps not be all right, and they were both afraid. 

Ellen turned off the shower with a tired sigh. Making her daily list did help, but generally it only helped to slow down her mind, clarify her thoughts and temper her anxiety. If it was meant to inspire positivity it almost always failed, because on the days when the love she felt didn’t outweigh everything else, it was just draining. Still, it had not been the most useless exercise a psychologist had ever suggested, and it was most effective when Peter lay in bed beside her and they made their lists aloud.

Once she was dried and dressed, Ellen found herself standing in the living room staring at her laptop and the box of old files with her hands on her hips and her phone clutched in one hand. She wanted to call him, but was trying to resist. She was a strong, independent woman, and she did not need to ring her silly boyfriend on their first night apart in three months like some kind of lovesick twenty-something.

But she also definitely did not want to tackle that box of files yet. She knew she had to and she knew it would distract her, but why not call someone else, she thought. She sat down at the tiny table and scrolled through her contacts. Her friend answered on the third ring. 

“Mac, hi! Is everything okay?”

“Hi Ange,” Ellen said as she leant back in her chair and smiled. “It’s fine. Bad time?”

“No, we’re just getting ready for bed but I can talk-”

“Bed?” Ellen asked as she looked at the clock on the microwave in the kitchen. It was twenty to ten, and she cursed herself for not thinking of the time earlier. They were farmers now, not undercover cops. “Sorry Ange,” she said. “I didn’t even notice.”

“That’s okay, honest,” Angie said. “How are you? How is Homicide? Have you found a decent place to stay yet? And Peter? I can’t believe you’re both homeless now!”

“We’re fine,” she replied. “Pete’s found a place, I’ve found a place. Homicide is fine, and right now I’m staring at a box of our old casefiles which will be my night’s work, because it’s so much easier for me to go through them all to look for potential bad eggs, than Danni or someone who doesn’t even know us.”

“Most of those files would have been censored anyway, right?”

“To a certain extent,” Ellen said. “In terms of our own names, yes. I just hope I can remember something important, if it’s there to be found or recalled. You and Cameron are still taking precautions?”

“Shirley and I are always armed if we’re off in a back corner of the property, and we’ve all got radios. Speaking of our old files though, Cam and I have been trying to think over the last few months too, trying to remember any cases you worked on where the perp or maybe the target’s family got really pissed off…we can’t remember much. All your big cases were so long ago, Mac, and we both remembered some bad arrests, some dangerous situations you got yourself into, but no one gave us that feeling of, ‘I’m going to come back from this and make you pay, bitch’, you know? I know that plenty of targets have screamed that at me over the years, grubby little drug dealers being led off in handcuffs mostly, and at least a dozen much bigger players in the city’s organised crime racket would definitely want Church’s head! But with your profiling training and your acting skills you mostly took the lead role on the real loner nut-jobs, the rapists and serial killers. I’m sure they’re all mostly dead or in prison.”

“Yes,” Ellen said on a sigh. She vividly remembered killing at least one. “But I just wanted to call and say hello, really, not to press you for information! How are you?”

“Pretty good,” Angie said on a happy laugh. “Sorry, you’re probably calling to deliberately not talk about work right now. It’s still a habit for me. Um, I’ve started feeling pretty sick in the last few days, but I seem to perk up at sunset, which is nice!”

“Tired?”

“A bit. I think I’m still shocked and excited enough that it’s outweighing the fatigue.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to be a mum,” Ellen said more softly as she smiled and turned on her computer. “I’m really happy for you. You’ll be a terrific mum.”

“Thanks Mac,” Angie said. “It’s good to hear from you actually. When we always just heard from Peter while you were away, it worried me. You seemed so well on the weekend that I’m not worried anymore, of course, but it’s still nice that you called.”

“I don’t want to lose touch,” Ellen said. After all, she added silently, there might come a time when she would not be allowed to call anymore. It might come suddenly, without warning, and without the chance to call one last time to say goodbye. “And I hope I explained why I didn’t call, well enough at your wedding,” she continued, in a voice that did not reflect the sadness she felt welling in her eyes. “I just needed to cut myself off from everyone to recharge. I’ve had a mobile phone attached to me ever since they were invented, but I can’t begin to describe how nice it was to not have it always there…although you’ve moved to the country so you probably understand.”

“The slower pace, it is very nice,” Angie agreed with a gentle laugh. “Homicide aren’t working you too hard, I hope? You should probably still be taking it easy, right?”

“My head is fine, Angie,” Ellen assured her. “I don’t get headaches anymore, and I’m looking after myself better than I was a few months ago. I hope you are too.”

“Absolutely. It helps to have Cam and his mum to wait on me too-” Angie laughed as Ellen also heard Cameron exclaim, ‘Oi!’ in the background and laugh. 

“I should let you both get to bed,” Ellen told them. “Sorry I called so late. I just wanted to say hi, and let you know I was thinking of you and your lovely new family. I’m really happy for you both, again.”

“Thanks Mac,” Angie said after a more cautious pause. “You too yeah? Take care.”

*

Angie hung up the phone and frowned at it as she sat cross-legged on the bed underneath the covers. Cameron had already laid down in bed but the lamp by Angie’s bedside was still on, and Angie had been about to turn it off when her phone rang. It never rang, and at first, Ellen’s name on her Caller ID had inspired panic. 

“Well that was weird,” she said as she glanced worriedly at Cameron. “She was just calling to chat, I think. She wanted to know how I was.”

“Why is that weird, Ange?” 

“She said she was just calling to let me know she was thinking of me and my lovely new family, and then she said goodbye really quickly. It was oddly sentimental.”

“Maybe she misses you, now she’s back at work and it’s not the factory, it’s not our unit, it’s not our team,” Cameron said on a sigh. “I know we’ve felt the same way.”

“Yeah. She said again she’s really happy for us, like she was just…making sure I knew that. She said everything was all right, though. She and Peter have found places to stay and she sounded fine...that was just really weird. She said she didn’t realise how late it was.”

“It’s not that late for us in our old lives,” Cameron reminded her. “Plus, she’s busy.”

“You don’t think anything is wrong, do you?” Angie asked as she cautiously winced. “Would she tell us? It kind of felt like she was calling to say goodbye, without actually saying it. I don’t like it.”

“Ange, honey,” Cameron said as he sat up and wrapped an arm around her back. “Mac, Danni and Pete are in the city trying to figure out who killed Kiera, and who leaked that video of Mac, and probably also who tried to kill her. I am sure that Mac is keenly aware of that. She’s probably got some kind of police protection, don’t you think? You’ve been wondering why Peter went with her on holidays, yeah? Well think about it; he and Danni probably thought it safest if he took her away, for a kind of intensive protection period outside of the usual system, in case this was an inside job. If our unit hadn’t already closed, we would have had to shut it down and relocate, with the release of that footage of Mac. They all put on happy-smiley-faces for our wedding but they are all on edge, and so are we. We just have to step back and let them do their jobs. I bet Mac just genuinely misses her friend, that’s all. She’s okay.”

“I bet you’re right, about the protection,” Angie agreed. She took a deep, relaxing breath. “It makes sense that’s why Peter went away too; it’s safer that way and Mac would go mad if she was in the system, like we all would. She sounded pretty happy.”

“We’re all just trying to adjust to this new reality, right?”

“I think so,” Angie said, confirming Ellen’s state of mind as best she could. Cameron wouldn’t say it, but the large part of him that was still Oscar Stone was worried too.


	8. Chapter 8

EIGHT

“Good morning!” Danni sang as she entered the surveillance room with her laptop and a coffee and found Ellen already there, still going through their undercover files while the cameras in front of her revealed Peter getting ready to leave the safe house. 

“Morning,” she answered with a muted smile. “How was your night, Danni?”

“Fine, fine. Are you having any more luck with those files than I did?” 

“Not really,” Ellen admitted as Danni sat down beside her. Danni put her coffee on the table and opened up her laptop beside it. “What’s that?” Ellen asked. 

“This is the surveillance feed on the Rudonikis house,” Danni said. “I can log in through here, and it saves us fiddling with any of the two safe house feeds.” 

“Terrific,” Ellen said. “And to give you a better answer, I’m almost ready to chuck it in and declare that any of my old targets could be involved just as easily as they couldn’t. Nothing and no one specific is jumping out at me, I spoke to Angie last night and she and Cam can’t think of anything either, and neither can you or Peter. There’s always going to be the off chance I was randomly spotted out and about and recognised, and it snowballed from there, but if it was accidental to a certain extent then it could be anyone. Nothing in these files is going to help us narrow it down.”

“So with no leads we are left waiting for someone to make a move on you, or for Peter to get the grieving mother to talk.”

“If she knows anything,” Ellen quipped with a doubtful glance at her friend. 

“If someone else is ultimately behind this as we suspect,” Danni reasoned. “Then this girl was probably being threatened, she might have been terrified. Even if our guy made her feel safe and she felt pretty confident, she had to know she was outing a policewoman and that was dangerous. Criminal, even. You think mum had no idea?”

“It’s likely. How much did you tell your mother when you were seventeen just about your normal life? My own brother terrified me and I still didn’t say anything to her.”

“Good point,” Danni said thoughtfully, before looking more closely at Ellen’s profile. “You really said nothing about your brother? Did you, uh, know?”

“That he was going to become a rapist?” Ellen asked pointedly. “Not exactly. I knew he was a very angry person, and my mother and father did too; they only pretended.”

“Have they ever come to terms with it?” Danni asked. Ellen shook her head and pressed her lips together. Danni continued, “I guess it’s harder for parents”.

“I don’t remember telling you that my brother was a rapist,” Ellen said suddenly as she sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “But I suppose you’ve had a good look at my police personnel file too. Have you ruled him out as a suspect in all this?”

“We’ve ruled out all your family,” Danni assured her. “How was dinner last night?”

“Oh, good.” Ellen sighed and shrugged. “I didn’t say much. I mostly recounted our travels. I didn’t give them the new address, and said I was staying with Peter for the time being but we were still looking for property. I couldn’t lie to them about the relationship, you understand. Eve hasn’t actually met Peter yet, she hasn’t seen any photographs, all she has is Amy’s description from the one time they were both at the hospital with me after the assault. Eve is practically begging me to meet him.”

“I can imagine,” Danni said with a smirk. “I bet Pete’s just as eager, the old charmer.”

“Mm,” Ellen hummed with a knowing smile. She watched Peter wave goodbye to the camera above and leave the safe house through the front door, on his way to see Paula Rudonikis. 

“How’s Angie?” Danni asked as she finished setting up her laptop. She moved her coffee cup out of the way to position it between them, and they waited, both watching Paula in her living room watching morning television.

“She seems good,” Ellen said. “She said she’s started getting sick during the day, so it’s probably best to call after sunset. She sounded perky enough when I rang even though they were about to go to bed. I’ve lost all sense of days and time, it seems.”

“Ah, that’s okay,” Danni said. “I’m sure she was just happy to hear from you. They were asking me, while you and Peter were away, if you’d called. Angie still thinks you’re upset about what she said to you in hospital.”

Ellen frowned deeply, progressively over the next few seconds. She looked at Danni.

“What?”

“What…she said…while you were in hospital?” Danni ventured. 

Ellen shook her head and the furrow in her brow crinkled as her lips parted. She was thinking, thinking, trying to remember a conversation with Angie in the hospital, any conversation, let alone one that had upset her, but Angie had left to join Cameron up at his property almost right after the assault. She hadn’t visited Ellen…had she?

“Oh God, I don’t remember,” she said softly. Her blue eyes went wide as she looked at Danni. “I’ve forgotten. Why does she think I’m upset? Why didn’t she tell me? Danni, I don’t even remember her visiting me. That’s awful!”

“It’s okay,” Danni said as gently as possible. She rested a hand on Ellen’s nearest wrist. “It’s okay not to remember, it was less than a full day after the assault, you’d just regained consciousness and you’d spent hours being questioned by Jeff, and Barry and Hayden, and Neil as well; it’s fine if it’s gone, it’s okay if you let it go.”

“But what did I say? Why is she upset with me?”

“No, no, she’s not. Angie was afraid that you were upset with her. She was talking to you about jumping into the sack with Oscar – Cameron, sorry – and trust me, this came right out of the blue for all of us. You talked to her about whether she was in love with him, or how important it was that she loved him already, or something like that, and Angie got a bit uncomfortable and cracked a joke about being surprised you knew what to do with a word like love, and you cried and kicked her out-”

“What?”

“Well, not like that. I’m summarising here!” Danni said. “I wasn’t there, but you did get upset, and she knows she offended you, and Peter assured her that you were high on painkillers and concussed and traumatised, and not to take your reaction to heart, but I think that Angie still feels like you’re uncomfortable talking openly with her.”

“I don’t remember that at all. Oh my God, should I tell her? Do I reassure her?”

“Maybe, but let’s watch Peter suck up to Paula first.”

“Okay,” Ellen said. She took a deep breath and fought back the tears of shame that were threatening to fill her eyes. Her heart hammered in her chest. Shit, she thought. She had cried and thrown Angie out of her hospital room? That didn’t sound like her. Ellen hated the word traumatised to describe herself but maybe Peter was right, and she had been. No wonder Angie hadn’t hugged her immediately after the wedding like she had the others, and no wonder she had asked straight away the previous night what was wrong, as though Ellen would only bother to call with bad news. 

I’ll fix it, Ellen decided as she watched Paula get up to answer her front door. At least the conversation the previous night might have gone some way to reassuring Angie. Ellen had said the important things she wanted Angie to know, that much was done.

*

Peter had noticed the deep lines around Paula Rudonikis’ mouth the previous afternoon, and they were just as deep that morning when she answered the front door. He offered her a cautious smile and ran a hand through his tussled, curly hair.

“G’day,” he said. 

“Oh, hi,” Paula replied. She recognised him but frowned, unsure why he was there. 

“It’s Ian, remember me? I was wondering if I could have a word?” he asked. “I think I might be able to help you, Paula.”

“Oh?” she repeated. She hesitated, but opened the door and let him in. “Um, sit at the kitchen table,” she told him. She shut the door and followed, wiping her hands down the front of her plain cotton dress. Her greying hair was tied back in a simple ponytail and she slid into a chair opposite Peter. “What do you mean?” she asked eventually.

“I know you’re epileptic,” Peter said. “See, Becky and I…we had a daughter. She had really bad seizures, and we tried everything to control ‘em. Normal medication didn’t work, she was in and out of hospital, until um, we tried, well-”

“Cannabis?” Paula asked. “You gave her cannabis?”

“The, the good stuff of course, the medicinal stuff,” Peter said. “We got it from this guy, our guy…he told us about your daughter, about how he used to prepare something similar for you-”

“He…he did?” Paula asked as her brown eyes went wide and some of the lines fell away from her mouth as it opened. Peter swallowed, looking nervous, as he nodded. 

“Yes. We didn’t know it was you at first, or here…I’m really sorry that she died.”

“T-t-thanks,” Paula whispered as tears filled her eyes. “It’s been tough, and the cops keep coming around to ask questions, and I’ve been in and out of hospital myself.”

“Here,” Peter said. He reached into his jeans pocket and retrieved a small zip-lock bag. “It’s pot, it’s not strictly medicinal…full strength. But if you want it, it’s yours.”

Paula stared at it on the table between them for a long time. 

“For real?” she asked finally, in a soft, timid voice. Peter smiled at her and nodded.

“Yeah. After we lost Taylor, Becky had a lot of trouble sleeping and settling, lots of anxiety…we got a little…it helped. She doesn’t use it anymore, but we have spare.”

“How much do you want for it?”

“Oh, nothing,” Peter said in earnest. “We just know what you’ve been through. We didn’t want to say anything yesterday, not right as soon as we met.”

“I’ve never bought drugs before, Ian.”

“You’re not buying them now,” Peter assured her. 

“Did you…did you meet Kiera?”

“No,” he said. “No, but we had the same supplier, you might say. We were told that she died…and of course we saw it on the news. It was kind of overshadowed though, wasn’t it, with some other news report that day? Some cop?”

“Oh, yeah I guess,” Paula said softly. “A policewoman was attacked the same day, but at night. She nearly died as well, I think. The police have been asking so many questions…they think it was connected.”

“Connected? What, like they knew each other or something?”

“Yeah…I guess? I don’t know. Kiera didn’t know any cops, we never been in trouble like that. It’s bizarre. Um, but Ian, your supplier…have you spoken to him recently?”

“No, probably not for a few months. Why?”

“Um…he’s dead,” Paula said. “Or at least, the police say that he’s dead.”

“Really?” Peter asked with wide eyes as he leant forward in surprise. “Lachlan?”

Paula pressed her lips together and nodded fiercely. 

“Oh my God,” Peter whispered. “No, I…I didn’t know. That’s not connected too, is it? Jesus. Becky is gonna be so upset, he was such a nice guy! So good for us!”

“He killed himself,” Paula whispered. “They don’t know if it was because of what happened to Kiera or not. He just left a note saying sorry, but um…for a while I thought the cops believed he might have done it, might have killed my little girl…I guess for a while I thought he might have too, which is why I told ‘em about how Kiera was getting cannabis for me, for my condition…they think she was a drug dealer, Ian, but she wasn’t. My little girl was not a drug dealer.” Paula began to sob into her hands as she hunched over in her seat. 

Peter sighed. It was impossible to be unaffected by the simple grief of the woman in front of him. He got up out of his chair and came around to her side of the table, where he could lean over and hug her as she cried. She felt fragile and there was little strength in her arms as she clung to his shirt. She just wasn’t well, and she was alone. 

*

“Aw, well done Pete,” Danni said softly as she watched her friend console Paula and stay on to make her a cup of tea. He was asking normal, everyday questions about Kiera and slowly getting Paula to talk more about the daughter who, by all accounts, was not a drug dealer and who was not a bad person. 

“Lachlan Fraser is firming as the supplier,” Ellen said thoughtfully. “But she still only gave Peter just enough to confirm that this is her understanding based on what the police themselves had told her.”

“Do you think she’s putting it on deliberately?” Danni asked. “Using what the cops told her to cover up her own pre-existing knowledge of the supplier’s identity?”

“I don’t know,” Ellen said. “If she knew it wasn’t Lachlan, we might have had a different reaction; she would not be so trusting of Peter right now if she definitely knew that it was not Lachlan Fraser. So either she definitely does know, or she believes that the police know and is just going with the flow here, because Pete’s story matches theirs.”

“I still say a twelve year old girl doesn’t trot off to buy dope, or she doesn’t suddenly appear after school one day with a bag full of dope, without having to tell mummy what the nice man’s name was. It was just the two of them in that house. She knew.”

“Mm,” Ellen hummed again. “How long are you going to let this drag out?”

“We’ll reevaluate at the end of the week, after you’ve also been at the school a few times to talk to Kiera’s classmates.”

“Oh, I forgot about that,” Ellen said on a groan as she shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “Do I have to?”

“Yes,” Danni said with a bemused chuckle. “What is this, payback for all the times we sat around at the factory and had a whinge about our assignment?”

“This isn’t me whinging, this is me genuinely doubting that I can handle it,” Ellen said, risking part of her dignity by looking Danni squarely in the eyes. “Honest.”

“Ellen, you can give a couple of school talks, I know you can.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Ellen said. She winced before continuing. “You want me to talk about protective behaviours? Three months ago I got beaten up. Someone knocked me out, straddled me, put his hands around my throat and licked my face. I’ve reread my statement in this last week so I’m all fresh on the details.”

“That wasn’t a failure on your part. Your training probably saved your life.”

“And I can’t tell those kids anything that will help them in the same situation other than to fight like hell and run if you can. Oh, and the usual don’t do drugs, don’t get so drunk you can’t look after yourself, and don’t get involved in criminal activities like trying to get police officers killed, because that’s called accessory to murder. Am I meant to tell them that? No one knows this about Kiera yet, we’ve held it back from the press…do I just pretend that some random pervert got the better of her?”

“First, take a deep breath,” Danni said, frowning at the genuine panic in Ellen’s usually steady blue eyes. “You know the answers to all of those questions. Second, they’re just kids Ellen.”

“Kids don’t like me,” she insisted. 

“Oh really? How many do you know?” Danni asked. She laughed when Ellen scrunched up her face and rolled her eyes. The answer was none, obviously.

“Please don’t tease me,” Ellen said on a sigh. “I know I’m deficient, I feel awful for it. I’m just not going to feel comfortable talking to those high school students.”

“I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable,” Danni assured her more gently. “Ellen, I thought this might be empowering for you, that’s all. After your assault, to go into a classroom like that and take control, to teach-”

“Not for me,” Ellen admitted. “Coming back here was empowering, and I’d like to speak to the teenagers one on one, to ask them what they know – I’d like to be able to do my job as an investigator – but not undercover. Not as some kind of role model.”

“But-”

“Danni, please,” Ellen said. Her voice softened as she looked at Peter quietly having tea with Paula. They weren’t talking anymore. “Don’t make me beg you. I will parade myself around this police department with a confidence I’m not sure I have, I will be seen to speak with those children, but I can’t get up there and tell them how to defend themselves when I’m not even sure I know the answer to that anymore. I can’t look into the eyes of all those children as though I have a right to be up there, teaching.”

“Okay, okay,” Danni said as she frowned and shrugged. “It’s only Friday morning, we’ll change tact and see if we can get some of the kids to come in with their parents again instead. They won’t be happy-”

“A seventeen year old girl was violently murdered, tell them we don’t give a shit if they’re not happy, but to suck it up and bring their children in for questioning.”

“Good point,” Danni said with a wry smirk, in light of the stubborn pout barely disguised on Ellen’s face. “Are you okay?” she asked Ellen in earnest. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you would be that uncomfortable. I thought it was a neat idea.”

“I’m just freaking out here Danni,” Ellen said under her breath as she stared at Peter and tried to soak up some of the calm she knew he was projecting in his own reality. “I feel like I’ve stuffed everything up and I don’t even know how. Our lives, gone.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Danni promised. “How was last night, without Peter?”

“It was shit,” Ellen mumbled, still without looking at her. “I didn’t sleep, I worked, but you knew that already because Constable Orr was here watching me and would have dutifully reported back to his boss, so don’t pretend you don’t know.”

“Hey, that’s not what I was doing,” Danni defended with a gentle frown. “Jesus Mac, I’m sorry about the school thing okay? Just stay calm for me, or you can take a walk.”

“Sorry,” Ellen said softly as she shut her eyes and wiped at them. Her breath hitched and she tried so very hard not to let any tears fall. She didn’t think she succeeded. “Sorry Danni. You’re doing a great job with what we have, you are, I’m just sad.”

“Do you feel safe?” Danni asked. She remembered Peter telling her that Ellen hadn’t always felt safe in her life, and that it was important. It was important to all of them. 

“I don’t know what I feel,” Ellen admitted. “I just know that I feel a lot more than I used to. I feel raw and exposed all of the time. I feel different being back here than I thought I would, and I feel different being back here to how I felt on long service leave with Peter, or compared to how I used to feel running undercover with all of you in tow. Maybe it’s the hit on the head, maybe it did something to me, or maybe this was all changing for me before that happened, I don’t know. I feel safe, but also not, and that’s okay too. For the time being I know that’s how it has to stay.”


	9. Chapter 9

NINE

“What do you want to do?” Neil asked as Danni sat in his office that afternoon.

“Well I’ve sent her back to the safe house,” Danni said as she crossed her arms and legs in her chair. “I’ve also sent Peter a message telling him to go back there and to stay as long as he needs. If Paula drops by tonight I can say he’s visiting his sister, no big deal. I’m not sure what to do next, I’m a bit taken aback by her brutal honesty.”

“Is she just not coping?” he asked.

“No, she is,” Danni assured him. “She’s just not up for the school talks. You saw her reaction when we told her initially; it hasn’t gotten any better.”

“The woman’s gone undercover to sidle up to serial killers. Are you saying she can’t look a bunch of seventeen year old girls and boys in the eye?”

“There are things in her past, Neil,” Danni said vaguely. “Don’t question, just accept. What I think we need to do now is just play it by ear. I cannot push her.”

“She was in here just the other day, right as rain, telling me that what we should be doing is outing her on the Internet again, trying to hook whoever might still be lurking. She looked and sounded one hundred percent confident in that idea.” 

“I’m sure she is one hundred percent confident in that idea,” Danni said. “That’s why she hates this one so much. It’s an awful idea though, whether it worked or not it would end any hope of a life we’re trying to salvage for her here, and I’m sure it’s screwing with her mind in a big way. You won’t hold this against her?”

“No, of course not Danni,” Neil said with a frown. “You and Peter aren’t going to try to disappear Ellen again though, right? She’s going to stay in the safe house?”

“It’s the safest place for her,” Danni agreed. “Ellen knows that, and we’ll look after her for as long as we can, I promise.”

“What’s the plan for the weekend?” Neil asked. 

“Well Peter has laid the groundwork with Paula, which is excellent. We were planning a quiet weekend in the safe house. I guess we’ll have to cancel the talks-”

“No-no,” Neil said. “They’re all approved. We’ll get someone else.”

“Well I can’t do it in case the kids in the area have seen Peter and I wandering around, or even going to visit Kiera’s mum. Peter can’t for the same reason. What about you?”

“Me? Give a talk to high school kids?”

“Talks,” Danni said, dragging out the ‘s’ to emphasize the plural with a cheeky grin. “Now who’s chicken, huh?” she teased. 

“The whole idea of the talks was to allow people to see Ellen getting close, to see her being involved in the investigation. No one is going to see that anymore, and no teenager is gonna open up to the Head of Homicide after class. We want someone sympathetic and approachable.”

“Ooh,” Danni said thoughtfully as she pulled out her phone and held it up. “What about Angie or Oscar? I could call in a favour?”

“Aren’t they on their honeymoon?”

“No,” Danni said with a smirk. “Angie is at home helping her mother-in-law renovate the four bed, one bath farmhouse. They’re extending to create two big master rooms with ensuites and renovating the kitchen, they have to replace the floors, the roof…it’s a huge job. Cameron, which is Oscar’s real name that he’s returned to, is looking after the property part-time, and is working as a local copper back in uniform. Both of them are entirely approachable, very confident, and they’re great with kids.”

“You want to bring them down?”

“I think I could at least ask them,” Danni said. “It’s to help Mac. We haven’t told them much because we were trying to protect them, but I could easily read them in. Don’t underestimate how persuasive the truth is in this case, Neil. They’re strong.”

“Hmm…they’d need to be here by Monday.”

“Let me talk to them,” Danni said. “If we can’t get them, we have to ditch the talks and we’ll re-question instead.”

“Okay, okay, do it,” Neil said. He rubbed his face and sighed. “Jesus, I’m turning the place into Undercover.”

“Hey, don’t blame me for the stupid restructure,” Danni said as she grinned and found the Pierce property phone number in her phone’s directory. “It wasn’t my idea to create some you-beauty statewide taskforce for drugs and to pilfer money and staff from Covert Services. Beside, I’m importing the best of the best left over. Trust me.”

*

Peter had to get a taxi to the safe house, because Ellen had his car and Danni had taken hers to work, and the stupid cab had taken twenty frustrating minutes to arrive. The driver then proceeded to yack-yack-yack while he drove too slowly across town. Peter had distracted himself by rereading his messages. First, one from Danni. ‘Ellen’s had a wobble,’ she wrote. ‘I’ve sent her home. You should go, stay as long as you like. I’ll cover if required.’ Peter had been stretched out on the couch after an hour spent talking to Paula when the message came through. 

‘What?’ he had typed back. ‘Is she okay?’

‘Yeah, just not great. My fault, I pushed her. Go see her.’

Peter had gotten up to leave immediately, before remembering that he did not have a car. So he had called a taxi and he had taken the time to pack his overnight bag. If there was no pressure to go back to the safe house that night then he wanted his razor and toothbrush and other stuff like that. He had also had time to message Ellen.

‘I’m coming home for a bit,’ he had written. He had debated with himself for a minute; what to say? How could he say it, without letting her know that Danni had told him? But of course Danni had told him. Ellen would know that as soon as he arrived whether he alerted her in a message beforehand or not, and he didn’t want to arrive outside the safe house in a taxi unannounced. Whether she had experienced a minor freak-out – a wobble, as Danni called it – or a burst of more intense paranoia, or even a fully-fledged anxiety attack complete with hyperventilation, he didn’t want to scare her.

‘Okay,’ Ellen wrote back almost immediately. That was all, just okay. He knew she wasn’t all right, then.

When he finally got to the safe house he walked quickly to the door, bag in one hand and key in the other, and unlocked the main lock as well as the deadbolt. He checked the alarm pad, disarmed it with a shaking, panicked finger when he saw that it had been armed, and when the stressful countdown settled he looked down the hall and called, “I’m here”. The bedroom door was shut and it remained shut, and Peter wondered if Ellen had fallen asleep in the forty-five minutes it had taken him to get home. He softened his steps to the door and took a deep breath before pushing it open.

She was asleep on top of the covers in her black tracksuit pants and one of his t-shirts. She was on her left side, facing him with one arm bent up around her face and the other stretched out and hanging partway off the mattress. Her eyes were closed and lips gently parted. Peter felt a deep, gut-wrenching affection for her wash over him as he listened to her steady, deep breathing and looked at her work clothes strewn on the floor at the foot of the bed. She had probably changed as soon as she got home, she had even taken her bra off, and she had collapsed into bed. It was barely midday.

Peter doubted she had slept much the previous night. He felt guilty that he had. 

Instead of waking her up he left his bag in the room and went to use the toilet. He also got two glasses of water from the kitchen and a packet of generic painkillers in case Ellen woke with a headache. He brought it all back to the bedroom and put one glass and the tablets on her bedside table. He stepped over her clothes and edged around the small room to his side to put his own glass down, before he sat on the edge of the bed. He removed his shoes and undid the button on his jeans. He reached for his phone. 

‘Danni I’m here,’ he typed. ‘She’s okay, sleeping. Thank you.’

‘Stay as long as you need,’ was the quick reply. Peter sighed. He didn’t know exactly what that meant or why Danni thought it was necessary, but if she was giving him permission to abandon his post barely a day into the operation then she was worried. Peter had a drink of his water before lying down in his bed beside his partner. Her back was to him and he watched her torso rise and fall in time with her breathing. 

“Elle,” he whispered. “Elle, I’m here love.”

She huffed, a cross between a moan and a whimper in her sleep, before fidgeting and turning over to face him. She slept better on her right side like that anyway, so Peter felt no shame in having woken her enough to prompt that change. Her slender arm was also no longer hanging uncomfortably in mid-air, and Peter nestled the back of one hand up against one of hers, enough to comfort her but not to wake her. Satisfied, he also closed his eyes. He never said his own sleep had been spectacular, after all. 

*

“Cam, the missus is here!” the young Constable at the front desk said when Angie walked into the local station. She smirked and crossed her arms over her chest. 

“The missus outranks you, Adam,” she said pointedly, before her eyes searched the rest of the station for her husband. Cameron soon walked out of his Sergeant’s office with the Sergeant close behind him. “G’day Bill,” she said to the Sergeant, before addressing Cameron. “Can we talk, Cam? I just had a long talk with Danni. They might need some help.”

“Oh, okay,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk, get some fresh air?”

“Sounds great,” she agreed with a smile. She was sure her skin looked pale, but no one else had said anything. So far that day she had only thrown up twice. Not bad. 

“What’s the problem?” Cameron asked a minute later as he held her hand and they strolled down the town’s main street, towards the expansive park. There were lots of shady spots to sit and talk there, and it was the middle of the afternoon, so they would not be disturbed. “Danni needs help? What kind of help?”

“She’s asked if one or both of us would spend a few days in the city next week,” Angie said. “Mac was meant to be giving a series of protective behaviours talks to Kiera’s high school classmates but she’s had to pull out. Danni’s sent her home sick, which is code for Mac’s not coping.”

“Shit,” Cameron said under his breath.

“It’s okay, Danni says that she’s okay, she’s just not up to talking about how to protect yourself from a physical assault after what happened to her yet, and not in front of kids. You know what she’s like with children of all ages; she’s afraid they judge her. But the talks are all arranged and the school was reluctant to agree in the first place, and Danni is hoping that the students open up in classes like that and they might talk about Kiera, because they’ve been uncomfortable doing that in interviews. Homicide are sure that one of them knows something about the person or people Kiera was involved with, but no one is talking. Mac was meant to be that person-”

“Asking Mac to get a bunch of teenagers to open up to her? Even I know that’s never gonna happen.”

“Oh stop. What if she has a child of her own one day?”

“She’s thirty-seven!” he insisted with a laugh. 

“So?” Angie asked in a huff. Her blue eyes filled with tears. “Oscar, they need us.”

“Okay, okay, yeah I know,” he said more softly. “What else did Danni say?”

“Just the obvious, stuff we already know but that she hadn’t wanted to confirm until she thought she might have to involve us. Mac really is in protection, she’s in a safe house under near-constant guard, and the situation isn’t good. It must be so stressful.”

“Has she been threatened again?”

“No, but she doesn’t want to be in protection like that forever. Danni and Pete are undercover to get closer to Kiera’s mum, but Danni’s had to relieve Peter to look after Mac and she doesn’t seem to know whether either of them will be back on board or not, so she said please-please-please come. That is code for this is fucking serious.”

“It’s not a very subtle code,” Cameron agreed on a sigh. “Shit. She was fine last weekend, they were both fine!”

“Mac probably was fine,” Angie said. “It was our wedding, they’d just gotten back, they hadn’t seen us in months and it was fun and a happy time. Being locked in a safe house working for Homicide when you know that at least one person is probably still going to try to kill you again and you’re actually trying to entice them to have another go is not a fun and happy time. Danni said she understands if we can’t do it, I’m pregnant and you have work responsibilities here now, but I told her we’d talk.”

“Well you are pregnant,” Cameron said. “And this could be dangerous…but whatever we do probably wouldn’t change the fact that Mac is and always has been the target.”

“Exactly,” Angie said. “Ideally I think you should do it, not because I’m pregnant and I couldn’t, but because I haven’t been feeling very well during the times when these talks are meant to happen-”

“You mean, all daylight hours?” Oscar asked in a gentle teasing voice. Angie chuckled and nodded as she gripped his hand more tightly. 

“Yes, smarty-pants. I’d still like to go, though. I’d like to see them again. Mac might need…I don’t know…a hug, because I almost forgot, but I did get a message from her earlier today. It wasn’t long before Danni called me actually, and it just said, ‘Danni mentioned something about a conversation we had when I was in hospital, you thought you’d upset me. I don’t remember Angie, sorry, I don’t remember you upsetting me or anything I said or did in response. I’m really sorry. Ellen.’ …I should have known she was upset, she never apologises that much or calls herself Ellen.”

“You mean this whole time you’ve been stressing that you greatly offended her by saying she didn’t know how to love, and she’s forgotten the whole thing?”

“Well yeah, I guess?” Angie asked. “She did have a really bad head injury, Cam. I just assumed that she remembered everything. Woops. Water under the bridge now!”

“So the bottom line is we’re being summoned.”

“We’re being asked very nicely to help. Danni obviously doesn’t think there is anyone else that she can ask to do this job. Not a lot of Homicide staff are working on this part of the case, they have all their other cases to go on with, and most of them aren’t really the type of guys who would enjoy giving school talks. Unlike us.”

“Yes, we are weird that way,” Cameron mused. “We both did school talks in the early years, before we got recruited over to undercover, and I have started doing them again in the last two months. It’s not bad.”

“I know, and Danni knows because I bragged about you on the phone to her. She knows I’ve done them before too, we had a conversation about it once, ages ago.”

“Ah, so the real reason she thought to call us is revealed!” he said playfully. “She knows about us.” Angie giggled and nodded as Cameron sighed in thought. “Okay,” he decided. “As long as I can clear it with work, which when I explain what we’re doing and why it should be okay…I assume we’d have to leave on Sunday?”

“Yes, but she said we could be back by Friday if all goes well. Personally, I just want to make sure that everyone is okay. I knew that conversation with Mac last night didn’t feel right, I knew it.”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Cameron said. 

“Someone is trying to kill her, babe.”

“Well, they tried once,” he reasoned. “There’s no proof that they’ll try again.”

“If he doesn’t, we’ll never catch him, they will never know who it was or why. If this was us, we wouldn’t want that for our future, and Mac would be doing everything in her power to find the little prick. We need to do that for her too. This could have happened to any of us, numerous times over the years. She is the reason it didn’t. Whatever’s happened, she hasn’t protected herself as well as she protected us.”

“Ange, it’s okay, I agree with you,” Cameron said. As though to prove it he led her to a park bench, they sat down, and he retrieved his mobile phone. He kept it on speaker.

“Detective Mayo,” Danni answered. 

“G’day Detective, this is Senior Constable Pierce.”

“Oscar! Oh wait, sorry, Cameron!” Danni gushed. She laughed and added, “You realise how good I am at calling you Cam until you catch me off guard, right?”

“I’m just checking if your spare room is available for a few days,” he said with a grin.


	10. Chapter 10

TEN

It took a few seconds for Ellen to remember where she was when she opened her eyes in the dark bedroom. The lights were off and it was night. She was curled up on her right side, facing half of a bed that was empty. It was strange how quickly she had gotten used to finding another person there beside her most of the time. She stretched a hand out towards the pillow. The fabric was cool to the touch, and Ellen soon became aware of the smell of either casserole or soup wafting down the hallway, as well as the low-level noise of a television news report. She stretched and rolled over towards her bedside table, which was where she kept her phone, to check the time. 

Seven o’clock. Shit. 

She resisted the urge to bolt out of bed. Instead, she got up slowly and took a few deep breaths. She felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment. Okay, so falling asleep in the middle of the day wasn’t a crime, but she was meant to be a high functioning Detective Senior Sergeant seconded to Homicide, and she was letting down the team.

She tried not to think about it like that as she quietly opened the bedroom door and padded barefoot into the sights of the surveillance cameras. She went to the toilet and then continued down the hall to the living area. Peter was cooking dinner and listening to the seven o’clock news, but he looked over his shoulder at her and smiled.

“I was hoping these gourmet smells would wake you.”

“What kind of gourmet are you gourmeting?” she asked in a gently teasing and inquiring voice as she walked up to him and slid an arm around his waist. He kissed her cheek and then turned his attention back to stirring the soup. 

“Chicken and vegie soup,” he said. “Hopefully the meat’s not too tough; it would have been better in a slow cooker all day.”

“If it tastes half as good as it smells, it will be delicious,” she assured him. She squeezed his waist proudly and pecked his cheek before stepping back. She wandered into the lounge room nearby and collapsed back across the couch. “I think I just slept for seven and a half hours, Peter,” she declared. “When did you get here?”

“About quarter past twelve. I had a nap for an hour or so, and I’ve just been here pottering. I didn’t want to wake you. I figured you hadn’t slept much last night.”

“Danni told you that?”

“No, you being asleep told me that,” Peter pointed out with a chuckle. Ellen sat up on the couch so that she could look at him over the back of the furniture. She smirked. 

“Don’t let it go to your head,” she told him. “I’ve never not been able to sleep without someone beside me.”

Peter grinned at her with his teeth pressed together in a cheeky, forced sort of smile, as though to very proudly and smugly declare, ‘until me!’ He held the grin and wiggled his eyebrows playfully until Ellen chuckled.

“Argh!” she declared as she threw a hand up in the air. “Okay, maybe I missed you. Don’t get used to it.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, beautiful,” Peter assured her with a knowing but more serious smile as he returned to finishing dinner. He retrieved two bowls and prepared to serve. “Do you feel better after the sleep?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” she said softly, though she hadn’t really had time to ask herself that question yet. “Can we talk about it later?” she asked. Later meant when they were in the bedroom, away from the gaze of whichever Constable was in charge of watching her for the night. “Right now I’d really like to just have dinner and watch the news.”

“That’s the plan,” Peter said. “A quiet, normal night in.” He walked over with a bowl carefully held in each hand, a spoon sticking out of each. “Careful, it’s hot,” he told her. Ellen accepted her dinner with both hands and shuffled around so that she could balance it on her lap. Peter sat beside her and did the same, and they both faced the television and watched the news report as they ate in otherwise silence. 

“This is delicious,” Ellen said finally. “What did you and Danni do for dinner last night?”

“She whipped up this savoury mince thing. It was pretty good,” he said. “Did you hear the conversation with Paula today?”

“I did. She misses her daughter a lot.”

“I thought it went pretty well,” Peter explained. “At least now we know that she either knows the supplier is Lachlan Fraser, or she’s made that assumption based on what the police told her. If she knew it definitely wasn’t him, she would have looked at me funny. I didn’t get that vibe at all.” 

Ellen grinned at him until he noticed the amused sparkle in her eyes and frowned.

“What?” he asked, before taking another sip of his soup. 

“That is exactly what I said to Danni, sweetheart. We’ve possibly been spending too much time together.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Peter said with a smile. “Only the last ten years in Undercover…does that count?”

“Eh,” she said, teasing him with a shrug and a toss of her head. Peter chuckled and when he finished the last of his soup, Ellen took the bowls back to the kitchen. “I spoke to Angie briefly last night,” she said as she returned. “Can I lie down?”

“Of course, Elle,” Peter said. He moved the pillow from behind his back to his lap and Ellen laid her head there as she curled up on her side facing the television. “How’s Angie?” he asked, wondering when would be a good time to tell her about the conversation he’d had with Danni an hour earlier. 

“She’s good,” Ellen said as she yawned and shut her eyes. One of Peter’s hands was combing through her hair and he knew it could put her to sleep, especially after a warm, light but satisfying dinner. “She said she’s started getting sick more.”

“Well having a baby will do that to you sometimes,” Peter said with a laugh. “I still can’t believe we’re talking about Angie and Oscar though. Imagine starting out your relationship like that too, wowza. They didn’t even date; they went straight to living together, to getting married, to having a kid, within a three month period. I know they worked together for eight years or so, but it’s not the same. At some point they’re going to both sit down and look at each other and ask, ‘What the hell just happened?’”

“They probably already have,” Ellen said with a bemused scoff. “And apparently she thought I was upset about something she said while I was in hospital? Did you know that? Danni said something to me about it offhandedly, like of course I knew-”

“Oh, you forgot?” Peter asked. Ellen nodded and turned her head back to look up at him. “I knew what had happened, but I didn’t think that Ange was still upset-”

“Did I really cry and kick her out of my hospital room?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I wasn’t there, but I assumed that you just fell back to sleep, Elle, that’s all. That was Friday afternoon, you were exhausted…you were lucky to even be conscious, as far as I was concerned. Ange told me she thought she had upset you, but that when she left you had just gone to sleep. No big deal.”

“Well that’s not what she told Danni. So I sent her a message telling her I forgot. It’s so embarrassing, but I actually don’t remember her visiting at all.”

“That’s okay,” Peter said softly. He watched as Ellen shut her eyes and turned her head back towards the pillow and the television. “Still tired?” he asked. 

“Mm, I guess. Not my best day. I just wasn’t feeling very well by the time I left. I don’t think I’m actually much better, Peter.”

“Still a bit over it, huh?” he asked kindly as he stroked her hair. She nodded. 

“There are moments in the day where I don’t give a fuck, yeah. I let Danni down.”

“No, you didn’t. She’s already found replacements to do the school talks, it’s fine.”

“I used to be so capable. I don’t even remember that person anymore. I’ve really been trying the last few days to connect with her…I think she’s gone, Peter.”

“Elle, all of you is right here.”

“I don’t feel like a cop anymore,” she whispered. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, aware that the cameras could not currently see her, and if she kept her voice soft they wouldn’t be able to hear her either. Later was now. “It’s hit me I suppose…I think I’ve left the job, mentally, emotionally, physically…I’ve left, love. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Peter whispered in reply as he looked into her sad blue eyes with the kindest smile he could manage despite his own sadness. “I always thought it would be me who got jack of this job first, you know.”

“Surprise,” Ellen hissed in a droll voice as she rolled her eyes and closed them again. She turned onto her other side so that she could lean her forehead into his stomach and the row of buttons on his shirt. She wrapped an arm around his waist and hugged him as Peter rubbed her back and they drifted into a comfortable, thoughtful silence. There was very little more that they could say without the risk of being overheard, and maybe there wasn’t a need to say anymore for now anyway, they both thought.

“You had to come back and try,” Peter whispered finally. That could not go unsaid. “You’ve done that now. You can relax, sweetheart. It’s time to rest now.”

“Probably haven’t tried hard enough,” she mumbled.

“What does trying hard enough mean?” he asked calmly. “When is it enough?”

“I don’t know where it leaves me, Peter. What am I supposed to do? What are you supposed to do? At the end of this I was never going to be able to stay a cop, we both know it…I can’t pretend that doesn’t matter, I can’t pretend it’s not always there in the back of my mind every time I walk into HQ or try to do my job. Don’t you think about it too?”

“Of course I do,” he whispered. “Don’t worry about me, though. I’m coming with you. It’s not even a question. Just like you, I’m just trying to do my job. It’s hard.”

“What are we going to do for the next twenty or thirty years of our lives?” Ellen asked. “If I even survive this, of course.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he whispered as his voice cracked. “We’re both walking away from this, and we can do anything we want. Look at Ange and Cam, they’ve totally changed their lives in a matter of months. We can do that too.”

“They make it look easy,” Ellen said on a sigh. “Danni makes it look so easy.”

“They’re not burnt out, they weren’t in the job as long as us. It hasn’t been easy for any of them, I promise.” He hesitated, before asking, “Where do you see yourself in five years, Elle? What do you see yourself doing?”

“Um…” She rolled onto her back and looked up at him with a thoughtful smile that made him smile as well, because he saw hope in her eyes and he heard it in her voice. “I see us in a house, cooking dinner and watching the news, or listening to music. I see us near the water, we can get a dog and go for walks by the water-”

“Ooh, what sort of dog?” Peter asked. 

“Something fluffy, or shaggy,” Ellen said with a playful grin. “Like a Collie, or a sheepdog, or something small and cuddly. White, I think. I’ve never had a pet.”

“We had a cat when I was a kid, or at least my sister had a cat…but your idea is a lot better, let’s do that. Puppy time!”

Ellen chuckled and nodded. She reached up and Peter laced his fingers through hers. She brought his hand back down against her breast and covered it with her other hand. 

“And I can also imagine,” she said as quietly as possible. “That maybe in five years we’ll have a little child. Or two. You never know.”

“Are you serious?” Peter asked with wide eyes. “That’s in your five year plan?”

“Maybe,” she said as she looked at him and managed a nervous smile. Her brow furrowed as she smirked briefly. “I know we’re both fairly old now, and if it’s something we want then it shouldn’t be a five year plan at all, more like a five month plan, where by the end of that time we need to be safe and be thinking about being in a proper family home and not this ugly, claustrophobic, character-less shithole.”

Peter threw his head back loudly and laughed as she gripped his hand and grinned. 

“Oh, you took the words right out of my mouth, Mac!”

“What do you think?” she asked softly as she drew his attention back down to her steady, inquiring gaze. “I know it’s what you want, Peter. I don’t know if it’s possible or if I’d be any good, but I can try. I’m your family, we’re a family. I’ve only been back on the Pill for a few months, I could come off it very easily. I think I want to.”

“How long have you felt like this?” Peter asked. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Everyone assumed that Ellen hated children because of the way she reacted whenever she had to deal with them – Exhibit A, that morning – but Peter had always known that Ellen had it in her to be a wonderful mother. She simply did not have the confidence in herself, and she was terrified of failing, she was terrified that any child she had wouldn’t love her, wouldn’t even like her. She thought that no child could possibly like her; what on earth did she have to offer them? She was afraid that she would be cold and distant, like her own adopted mother, who was the only mother she had known until just a few years earlier. That woman had not been a great example of maternal warmth and love and kindness. Peter didn’t even fully understand why they had adopted baby Ellen and the angry boy who became her brother in the first place. 

So Ellen was not using the word family lightly; Peter knew she had never felt a part of one before. She had hidden herself away from them as a girl, she had protected her innocent heart by wrapping it up nice and tight, and Peter suspected that all of the tiredness and emotion that had surfaced in the past few months was a direct result of her unlocking those hideaways, and consciously or unconsciously stripping back those layers of protection. He had loved watching her unfold during their time away. He had watched the stress melt away and the concussion heal, and he then watched her personality flourish. Ellen had decompressed and a sort of calm came over her as they spent their days exploring the country and their nights beneath the stars. There had emerged a genuinely happy and playful woman…and she wanted to be a mum. 

Peter had already accepted that the Ellen he knew and loved did not want children, she was thirty-seven and he was forty-six, and it was not as big a deal as he always thought. He didn’t need a child, he was perfectly happy with Ellen, and Ellen didn’t deserve to be pushed. She deserved to be loved for who she was, no matter what, and Peter had never wanted her to feel backed into a corner. No pressure. Just easy loving. 

“I love you,” he whispered before he could stop himself at least applying a little pressure. He didn’t think it mattered anymore, though. Ellen’s blue eyes had filled with tears and she bit her bottom lip and nodded. Her grip on his hand was secure and comforting. Peter could feel her heart beating firmly beneath her breast. 

“To answer your question Peter, I’ve been thinking about this a while. There were just moments, I think maybe in North Queensland, watching you sleep and listening to the ocean across the street…I started to imagine it then. I didn’t want to say anything. It felt strange at first, I wasn’t sure if it would go away, and I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I didn’t want to risk losing you if I changed my mind, but I haven’t. It didn’t matter where we were, Cairns, Gold Coast, Tasmania, here…it follows me.”

“But no pressure,” he said as he tenderly brushed the fingertips of his free hand along her cheeks. “We are older, it’s okay if it doesn’t happen. You’re right, we’re family.”

“Yep,” she whispered. “I want you to meet my mum, and Amy again, before we go.”

“They’ll be able to visit us Elle,” Peter assured her. “They’re not connected to this, there’s no way to link them to you on paper unless you go back through adoption records, and they’re not on any next of kin information with the police. They’re safe.”

“I know.”

“I know you do. So you had a very productive seven and a half hour sleep, it seems,” Peter added with a smile as his eyes filled with tears. “Got some thinking done?”

“I guess,” she said as her face flushed. “Sorry it all just tumbled out of me then, everything about work and life and our future…I know I’ve tried my best, Peter. With the job? I know I’ve tried my absolute best. It’s just not a part of me anymore. You know what I really want to do? I almost can’t believe it…but all I want to do lately is stay home and focus on us and our family. Do you think that’s selfish? Or lazy?”

“No,” Peter said. “Your last house, the one you sold while we were away, you never even made it a home. It was kind of empty, you had nothing there. You’ve never made any place into an actual home for yourself, Ellen, except maybe our old workplace. Our work was like a home. Your sole focus has been on work for your entire adult life. Mine’s been that way for a long time too. You genuinely need time off, it’s not being lazy to want to rest, and it’s not selfish to look after yourself or the other things or people who are important to you…like me,” he added with a grin. 

Ellen chuckled. She pushed herself slowly up to sitting and turned to face him. She had let go of his hand and it had sought out her thigh. He kept her close as they looked quietly into each other’s eyes for several seconds. 

“You’re not disappointed in me?” she asked. “For not being able to do those talks? I just actually do not think I’m strong enough again yet. I’m still feeling resentment, tiredness and apathy. I made it back here, I can focus on the little things that I know how to do very well, I can even cope knowing we just had that whole conversation with somebody else watching and listening…I just can’t do any more than that.”

“I am not disappointed,” Peter whispered as he cupped her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “I know how hard it is to be open about this stuff. I never talked enough myself, when I went through bad patches. I’m only realising that now too, listening to you and thinking about how we should move forward. You’re brave, Mac. And smart, and you’re a fighter. I know you’re fighting those feelings, but rest, love. I will never be disappointed. All I want is for us to be safe, healthy, and happy.”

“I think we can manage that,” she said. “At least, we’re getting there.”

“Good,” he said with a watery smile as she nodded in his grasp. “Good.” Peter pulled her face towards his for a kiss but it was little more than a quick, decisive peck. Instead, Ellen preferred to wrap her arms around his shoulders. She hugged him as tightly as she could for as long as she could. Peter breathed deeply against her and buried his face in her neck as he returned the firm embrace. Ellen combed her fingers through his hair when she felt his moist breath on her skin and the emotion seeping out of him. He whispered that he was proud of her before letting her go and Ellen could not help smiling, slightly bemused by the statement. She hadn’t done anything!

She did, however, suddenly feel calmer and lighter, and when Peter lifted his head she surprised him with a longer, lingering kiss. She would never be disappointed either.

“So,” she whispered when they parted and she touched her forehead to his. She kept her hands up around his face to try to limit how much of their conversation was picked up by the microphones, and Peter raised his hands to her face to do the same. He played with her ears and her hair while Ellen rubbed his cheeks. 

“So?” he asked, enjoying the impromptu face massage. His nose brushed past hers.

“I’m actually meant to get my period today or tomorrow,” she said. “Should I bin the Pill? I’ve been wanting to. We can just see what happens. We shouldn’t wait, Peter.”

“Yeah?” Peter asked as he shut his eyes. Ellen nodded against him. “Okay then.”

“Can you stay tonight, or do you need to be back with Danni? It’s okay if you have to go, I feel better now I’ve had a big sleep and gotten all that off my chest. I’m okay.”

“I’m staying,” he said. “I’ll stay another night. Will you marry me, Elle? Mac?”

“Yep,” she whispered simply. She pecked his lips and drew him in for another hug.


	11. Chapter 11

ELEVEN

Danni smiled broadly as she knocked out a quick tune on the front door of the safe house. It was Saturday morning, she was dressed in casual clothes, her handbag was slung over her shoulder, and when Peter answered the door she asked, “Wanna go to breakfast?”

“It’s raining,” Peter replied as he gestured around them. The sky was grey and there was a light but persistent drizzle. Danni rolled her eyes.

“You both still have to eat, do you not?” she asked. 

Peter pressed his lips together as though he had to think about it, when already Danni knew that he was keen. Anyone would be, if they were also stuck in a safe house, and Peter had the pleasure of calling two of them home for the time being. Yet Danni also knew that it would depend on whatever had happened the previous afternoon and evening with Ellen. It would depend on how she was. 

“Yeah all right,” Peter said with a smile. “Elle’s just in the shower, come in.”

“I spoke to Cam last night-”

“Oh, I haven’t told her yet,” Peter hissed as he let Danni into the house and closed the door behind her. “I mean she’s fine, she’ll be fine with it, just…ease your way in.”

“Got it,” Danni said with a laugh. She gestured to the closed bedroom and bathroom doors as she passed, on their way to the living area. “You better go grab your coat and then I thought we’d feed your partner some pancakes to cheer her up after yesterday.”

“Brilliant Danni, help yourself to the kitchen if you like.”

She gave him a broad grin and carried on to do just that, while Peter stepped back into the hall, knocked on the bathroom door, and slipped in without waiting for an answer. Ellen was combing her hair in her underwear and a singlet, and she smiled across at him when he entered. 

“Was that Danni’s laugh I just heard?”

“Yep. Wanna go out to breakfast?” 

“Sure,” she said. She put her brush down and picked up her button-down blouse from the closed toilet seat, which was where her folded jeans had also been placed. She would probably go into police headquarters later in the day, but she was not putting on a suit on a Saturday just for that. “I suppose this is the obligatory check-up, right?” she asked. “To make sure the mental patient is okay?”

“You’re hardly a basket-case,” Peter said with a chuckle. He leant against the small vanity, crossed his arms with a happy smile and watched her dress. “But yeah it probably is a bit of a check-up on a mate.”

Ellen pressed her lips together wisely and rolled her eyes. 

“How much of our conversation last night do you think was recorded?” she asked. 

“Not a lot,” Peter said. “We kept our voices down for the most part, and you know what Danni’s like; if she knew we were engaged she would have said something to me already.”

Ellen offered him a nervous smile at his casual use of the E word. 

“Wow,” she said as a curious frown briefly flitted across her brow. “We’re engaged.”

“Ahuh,” Peter said with a proud grin that filled her with a little extra confidence. 

“Are we going to tell her?” she asked. “Do we tell anyone? You’ve done this twice before…what do we do now?”

“We get married as fast as we can before someone shoots you too,” Peter quipped, clapping his hands together eagerly. He started laughing at the pinched, unimpressed expression on Ellen’s face. “Sorry, bad joke?” he asked, chuckling. “I can’t help it, I’m ecstatic. It took all my energy to answer the door looking tired, bored, and meh.”

“We should probably tell her then,” Ellen said. “Before you overstretch yourself.”

“That’s wise. You can tell her when you think the time is right, over breakfast maybe. I’m going to get our coats and tell Danni…five minutes? Do you want your phone out of the charger?”

“Yes please,” she said with a smile. She picked up her jeans before stretching forward to gently kiss him. “I won’t be long,” she promised. 

Peter grinned as he pulled back and stroked her pink cheek. She looked a lot better that morning, he decided. From the minute she had woken up and rolled into him for a morning cuddle while it rained outside, he could feel that she had relaxed, and he could see it in her eyes. Work was still there, it had to be done, the safe house was still there, they were still being watched by two inexperienced police many years their junior, and it would still feel oppressive most of the time, but it wasn’t permanent. This was just something they had to do, and Ellen had said as much that morning.

Peter left the bathroom to let her finish getting ready in peace, and he found Danni sitting at the counter typing a message out on her phone. 

“Uneventful night in the safe house?” he asked her as she finished what she was doing and looked up. Peter busied himself by unplugging Ellen’s phone from the charger on the kitchen bench and locating her handbag on the dining table. 

“Very,” Danni said. “But we also made a very promising start yesterday. You’ll have to check on Paula in a day or two to see how she’s doing. I do know that she has used some of the marijuana we brought her, she’s been talking out loud to Kiera still, we pick it up on the wire, and said she’s feeling better, so that’s good. It’s not like we’re going to charge her for it, but it’s good for her health. She’s very thankful.”

“Yeah I’ll head back there today,” Peter said. “Things are fine here now.”

“Are you sure?” Danni asked. “You two had a good talk last night?”

“You mean you didn’t get a word for word account first thing this morning?”

Peter raised his eyebrows expectantly and Danni blushed and smiled more shyly.

“I should tell you,” she said. “This place isn’t set up here for us to spy on you, the volume is down or off most of the time, and all I got told this morning by your overnight watcher was that ‘nothing important happened’. You came home, Ellen woke up, you both talked for an hour or so and then went to bed.”

“Yeah, we’re real exciting people,” Peter said with wide eyes and a pointed smirk. Danni chuckled and nodded. 

“Don’t worry, I know the feeling.” She turned towards the hallway and grinned when Ellen emerged. “Good morning, gorgeous! Pancakes?”

“Always,” Ellen said with a gentle laugh, as Peter handed her the handbag and her phone. “Thanks for the excuse to get out of here for a couple of hours Danni. I’m feeling a lot better today after catching up on some sleep, so do you need me at HQ today? I could just sit somewhere with a few files looking conspicuous?”

“If you want more reasons not to be here, then yes, I can always use your help.”

“I’m really sorry about the school thing,” she added more seriously, her smile faded.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. We have a Plan B and I’ll tell you both about it over breakfast. You can tell me all about your travels as well, I still haven’t seen pictures!”

“Oh, I’ll pack my tablet into my bag!” Ellen said as she hurried back down towards the bedroom. Peter gestured for Danni to follow, as he would pick up their coats and they could leave straight away, hopefully before the rain got any heavier, because neither of them had an umbrella.

*

“So…I spoke to Cameron this morning,” Danni ventured over an hour later, after they had eaten breakfast and she had looked through some of the photographs from around Australia that Ellen had backed up onto her tablet. 

“I still can’t get over calling him Cameron,” Peter said with a chuckle. “I always have to stop myself calling him Oscar.”

“Mm, I did call him Oscar yesterday,” she said. “He doesn’t mind as long as it’s just over the phone and not in public. I’m sure even Ange slips up sometimes.”

“How is he?” Ellen asked as she sipped her tea and looked at Danni. “We had a good talk at the wedding about work, he seems to be really enjoying being back there.”

“Yeah, he’s settled in now I think,” Danni said with a smile. “I actually called because I know they’ve done school visits before, both of them, and I wanted to see if they felt like coming down for a few days to help us out.”

“Angie and Cam?” Ellen asked with a raised brow. She sat back in her chair and pursed her lips. It was a terrific idea, as long as she ignored the fact that now all of her friends and ex-colleagues knew that she had pulled out of one aspect of her job because she couldn’t handle the pressure. These were people who had once trusted her with their lives, repeatedly, for many years, and she desperately hoped that they were not all second-guessing how safe they had been in her hands all that time. 

“Ahuh,” Danni said with a wary smile. “What do you think?”

“I think they’d be better at appealing to teenagers than me,” Ellen said honestly. “Angie’s started to feel the effects of morning sickness though.”

“Yes. Originally yesterday afternoon they said they were both coming, but I got a call from Cam late last night and after they had a talk with Shirley they decided that only Cam would come. Angie really wants to, but it’s probably best that she’s at home, plodding along with her renovation projects at her own pace; she can rest when she’s not feeling well and she probably shouldn’t be on active duty when there’s a danger that this case could turn nasty. They still have a lot to do at home. Instead, Cam has gotten a few days off work and will be here tonight, so that tomorrow he can prep and on Monday we can put him into the high school. He seems confident about it.”

“Yeah, he’ll be great,” Peter said with a smile. “He’s got that laid back nice-guy look about him, and the teenage girls are gonna think he’s pretty cute in his uniform.”

“It sounds good Danni,” Ellen added with a polite smile. “How long will he stay?”

“The classes are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so he’ll head home Wednesday night or Thursday morning…but it could depend on if we get any extra information, if anything happens, etcetera, etcetera. He’s happy to stay for a week if he’s needed, his new Sergeant knows where he’s come from and how sudden this has all been, and he knows that we’re working on the ‘assault of that senior policewoman in the city a few months ago’. So they’re happy for Cam to do his bit, they know he’ll be back.”

“Good,” Ellen said. “Thanks for organising that so quickly, Danni. Sorry, again.”

“It’s okay. I did also ask Neil if he wanted to do it, and you should have seen him baulk!” Danni said with a laugh, in an attempt to set Ellen at ease. “This is a guy with two little kids of his own, he’s the Head of Homicide, and he could not say no fast enough! So I called in the cavalry.”

“I was thinking in the shower this morning,” Ellen continued. “That I should take a look at our old unit’s files, but not the case files as you’ve been doing. My opinion on those hasn’t changed since yesterday, they won’t help us specifically…but it occurred to me that I should look at my archived files of staff listings, including contractors and transfer applicants. I know you’ve looked and asked me about this, but it might be something I need to meditate on, with the records in front of me.”

“You said you couldn’t think of anyone we worked with off the top of your head who might want to expose you,” Danni reminded her. 

“Mm, well I’m less trusting of the top of my head lately,” Ellen said. “If I’ve transferred people away, if I’ve rejected transfer applications…actually I know I rejected a number of transfer applicants, but it was all many years ago now.”

“Come to HQ today and we’ll track them down,” Danni assured her. “If you’re up to it of course. Honestly if you’d just prefer to sit at home and read a novel, you can. Or I could bring the files to you-”

“I’m meant to be seen, Danni,” Ellen insisted. “Believe me, I can suck it up with the best of them. I’m more easily thrown off my perch these days but I’ll still be back on it as soon as I can for the next round, even if I have to claw my way up. Got it?”

“Understood,” Danni said. “I appreciate you being so willing to go through with this, but we’re going to look after you Ellen, so anything you need you just let me know.”

Peter cleared his throat obviously, coughed into his hand, and raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, you too Peter,” Danni said off-handedly with a plain expression, before finally cracking a smile as he rolled his eyes. They all sat back in their chairs and laughed.

Ellen glanced at Peter and saw him looking relaxed and happy. This seemed like a good time to her. Her heart swelled as she looked from Peter to Danni and grinned. 

“Ignore him Danni,” she said. “Soon he’ll be making jokes about me looking after him, or not looking after him, considering he’s my chef. We’re going to get married.”

Danni’s smile faltered as her mouth dropped open in a stunned grin. Her green eyes widened as she looked between them, from Ellen’s hopeful and somewhat nervous smile to Peter’s proud grin and wiggling eyebrows. 

“You’re engaged?”

“Ahuh,” Ellen quipped with a quaint, satisfied smile. 

“I asked her in the living room last night,” Peter told her. “Fitting, I thought, kind of a spontaneous moment in the middle of the fishbowl…like half our lives, really. But it’s been a joint decision a long time coming, Danni.”

“You’re engaged?” Danni asked again. Tears filled her eyes. “Really?”

“Yes,” Ellen said. “I promise we’ll get married before we leave as well, right Peter?”

“Fine by me,” Peter said. “I just don’t want Ange and Cameron to give us heaps about copying them, like a pair of ten year olds. Hundred bucks Cam is gonna make some joke about him and Ange starting a trend.”

“We’re in totally different circumstances, Pete,” Ellen assured him with a teasing grin. “And I’m sure their good humour will be tempered very quickly when, at the end of this little game, we all have to say goodbye.”

“Augh, could you please stop reminding me of that?” Danni asked as she covered her face with her hands. “I’m sure we can fix it somehow so that you don’t have to disappear. We’ve taken down Kiera’s original posts. I know they’re still out there-”

“We won’t be fixing anything if we need to re-bait the chat rooms,” Ellen said. “I know you know about that backup plan because I’ve spoken to Neil and he’s agreed-”

“It is a last resort,” Danni insisted as she looked back up and pleaded with her friend in a lowered voice, so that they were not overheard. “Ellen, it goes against every part of me that is still an undercover cop. I know the plan offends you too…Peter as well, you’re both so security conscious…but I also understand why you’re suggesting it.”

“At least now in the worst case scenario Peter can definitely come with me,” she added with a content smile. “I don’t have to worry about being shipped off alone.”

“I was never going to let that happen, knowing the two of you as well as I do. Have you talked about when you want to get married, or how you want it to be?”

“No,” Peter said as Ellen shook her head. “But we’re not religious…maybe near the ocean? Ellen’s mum and sister should be there, plus you and our outback mates.”

“Outdoors?” Danni asked cautiously, not for a fear that it would rain – Peter and Ellen didn’t mind about the rain – but because Ellen would be exposed at an outdoor wedding, and if she was still being watched- “It sounds lovely and small,” she said, forcing a gentle smile to her face while her mind began to spin. It wasn’t their problem, she realised. They didn’t want to dwell on the fact Ellen’s life was possibly still in danger, they just wanted to get on with living, and that was fine. Great. 

“It does actually,” Ellen agreed with a grin. She wasn’t supposed to show any affection towards Peter in public, since he and Danni were living together in a safe house not too far away, but she reached under the table and squeezed Peter’s thigh. 

“Well I could not be more pleased,” Danni said with a genuine smile. “Anything you want me to help with just let me know or, oh, dress shopping! But we’ll keep this engagement quiet, okay? It’s personal, it doesn’t have to be a part of all this.”

“Especially not when I’m living with you!” Peter said with a chuckle. “Plus we want this one here to seem accessible and unprotected. It’s not obvious she’s got any sort of protection because the people watching her are also watching us, and equally it should appear that there are long stretches of time when Elle might be on her own. So no significant others, no bloke always hanging around, and that way no one will be tempted to use me either. I think just one of us being the target for the time being is enough. We’ll tell Cam and Ange discreetly, I’ll tell him to keep his mouth shut.”

“Him? You’re just assuming that Angie doesn’t need telling?” Ellen asked with a bemused smirk. “Of all you lot, Cameron Pierce is the least likely to gossip. The two of you were always the worst offenders by far.”

“Me?” Peter insisted with a playful hand over his heart and a mockingly shocked expression. Danni was laughing and Peter smirked at her and said, “Look hurt, Danni. She wounds us.”

“Natter, natter, natter,” Ellen teased with a happy grin. “At least it makes you both good at your jobs.”

“Oh, I knew there was a compliment hiding in there somewhere!” Peter added, laughing. He reached out and briefly rubbed her back. “Well done mate.”

“You’re stuck with me now,” Ellen quipped with a pert, close-lipped smile. Thank God, she thought more seriously, because she had never needed anyone as much. She had never needed anyone at all, actually. Peter’s reply was a simple, happy grin and another brief pat on the shoulder. He knew, though.

“I’m going to get another cappuccino,” Peter said. “Either of you want anything?”

“No thanks love,” Ellen said as she gestured to the table water, which would do.

“You know what’s cute?” Danni asked once Peter walked up to the counter. Ellen looked at her and raised her eyebrows, inviting her to continue. “He thinks he protects you, or that our perp will be put off or distracted if he’s around you. It’s sweet.”

“And so inaccurate,” Ellen replied, her voice quiet and her smirk wise. “Both you and Peter were not fifty metres away the last time this person fought with me, knocked me out, wrapped his hands around my throat and licked my face. They had to know it was a police operation, just as they had to know that I was a policewoman…and so they knew I had big strong backup nearby. It didn’t matter then, and it won’t matter now.”

“Just don’t tell Peter that,” Danni said. “He’s doing a very good job convincing himself otherwise.”

“I just don’t want him in the line of fire trying to protect me,” Ellen said with a frown. “I’d never forgive myself, Danni.”

“I had to send him home yesterday, you’re my friend, and look what happened-”

“I know, thank you so much,” Ellen assured her with a smile. “Obviously it was a good decision. But…we do want this person to feel comfortable to have another go at me, and I don’t want Pete running out in front and getting hurt. He says he won’t, knows he shouldn’t, but we both know him better than that. I just couldn’t.”

“I understand,” Danni assured her. “If it comes to it, I’ll try and hold him back.”


	12. Chapter 12

TWELVE

Cameron stepped off the elevator at Homicide and looked around for a familiar face. It was Saturday afternoon, and he knew that Danni was locked away in her safe house with Peter for the operation involving Paula Rudonikis, but he had been assured that Ellen was at work. He was glad to hear it. She was always so strong and he had been worried when Angie told him about Danni’s SOS phone call, but he also did not blame her for not wanting to do the talks. It was not the most popular job even among new and much more eager recruits.

He spotted the back of a dark-haired woman in plain clothes sitting at a desk about halfway in smiled when he recognised the figure. He hurried to her before anyone stopped him to ask where he was from and what he wanted. He was wearing his uniform in an attempt to avoid too many questions, and he saw the look of surprise on Ellen’s face when she looked up and saw what he was wearing as well. 

“Look at you,” she said with a laugh. “You almost look like a real Senior Constable.”

“Very funny,” he said. She stood and hugged him briefly. They really hadn’t hugged much in the past, Cameron could probably count the number of times on his two hands, but he was not about to complain. It was refreshing to see Ellen looking and acting more relaxed; she was even wearing jeans in the office, which Cameron could not remember ever happening before. “How are you?” he asked. 

“Fine,” she promised with a smile. “I think it’s just difficult to come back from a holiday and get straight back into things.”

“Well, especially when someone’s tried to kill you and your security has been compromised, am I right?” Cameron asked with a teasing grin and a chuckle. “So, you have me here for a few days. Use me. What can I do?”

“I want to introduce you to Neil Underwood, he’s basically running this with Danni-”

“This is the Head of Homicide right? The guy whose daughter was Danni’s practice model for all the braiding?”

“Yes,” Ellen said with a smile. “Not the scariest Inspector you’ll ever come across-”

“Oh, really?” Neil asked from behind her. Ellen jumped and took a step back as she spun around to face him, while Cameron chuckled. “I will have to work on my image,” Neil conceded. He stuck out his hand. “Cameron Pierce, I presume?”

“Yes Sir,” Cameron replied as he shook the Inspector’s hand. “We’ve known some pretty, uh, average, Heads of Homicide in our time in Covert Services, Sir, so Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie here meant it as a compliment.”

“Yes, I’m familiar with your sense of humour, Ellen,” Neil said as they smirked at each other. “But let’s drop the formalities. Come to my office and Ellen and I will brief you. Thanks for coming at short notice.”

“I will always be available to help my mates from Covert Ops on short notice,” he said as he and Neil walked ahead, while Ellen quickly gathered a number of files from her desk to bring with her. She thoughtfully left a few of her old recruitment files that she and Danni had tracked down from the archives, just in case anyone around was curious about what she was doing there at five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.

“So, what are we talking to the kiddies about this week?” Cameron asked once Ellen joined them and took a seat beside him opposite Neil’s desk. She handed him part of the folder that Danni had initially prepared for her, the part she had been avoiding for days and thankfully no longer had to look at; it was all his!

“It’s basically an updated recap of stranger danger,” she explained. “In a few minutes I’ll take you into the surveillance room where, if our timing is good, we might catch Pete and Danni talking to Kiera’s mother about Kiera, because what we still do not know is how she was first contacted by the person who killed her. We don’t know how they kept in touch and we don’t know what convinced her to go ahead with the plan to expose me on the internet; why would she do something like that? Finally, we don’t know if the meeting in the park was planned or if she really was out for an innocent run and taken by surprise. We are hoping that Kiera’s mother knows the answer to some of those questions, but it is more likely that Kiera told a friend instead…especially if she or her mother was being threatened.”

“Online grooming, do you think?” Cameron asked.

“We couldn’t find anything,” Neil explained. “But we do know that there is a phone that has gone missing. She used it to keep in touch with Lachlan Fraser with regard to her mother’s cannabis, so it’s fairly certain she was using it for any other clandestine activities. We believe whoever killed her has taken it with them.”

“Clever. Imagine if they’d left it? All the answers to those questions are probably sitting on that phone. It’s not registered to her?”

“No,” Neil said as Cameron opened the file in his lap and began flicking through the pages. “You’ll see that Monday is basically focused on the cyber aspect; why and how adults approach children on social media and online, what to do if that happens to you or a friend, telling a few stories and showing a few examples of really convincing bluffs that we have permission to use from real case histories. Reinforce that the motives are not always sexual, it’s about manipulation and they need to be smart and to speak up. There’s no shame reporting you’ve been conned to the cops.”

“Got it,” Cameron said as he nodded thoughtfully. “How should I respond to questions about Kiera?”

“The truth,” Ellen said. “We still don’t know who killed Kiera or why she was killed. We believe that she was communicating with somebody either online or in person, and that this person threatened her, or blackmailed her into putting information onto the Internet that led to a police officer being seriously injured-”

“Has Kiera’s murder and your assault been linked publicly yet?” Cameron asked.

“Yes,” Neil answered. “But the media has moved on from that, and it’s likely that Kiera’s friends are just thinking about Kiera. It wouldn’t hurt to broaden their perspective…this girl was doing something illegal, probably because she felt like she didn’t have a choice, and ultimately she was killed. These are senior students you’ll be talking to, all seventeen or eighteen; they can hack the facts.”

“You could also say that the police are still rather desperately searching for information to help explain what happened,” Ellen said. “Insist that it is not about placing blame, it’s not about finding evidence against Kiera; we want whoever was really behind this. If anyone has information on Kiera’s movements, her contacts, conversations they had with her that ring alarm bells, even information on her state of mind leading up to her death, they must come forward. Anything could be important.”

“Okay, so on Monday we cover the intellectual and emotional safety, and on Tuesday then we’re looking more at physical safety. Not walking home alone, not letting drinking and partying get out of control, getting out of situations you feel uncomfortable in, faking phone calls on your mobile in the back of suss taxis, stuff like that.”

“Perfect,” Neil said with a nod. “Then Wednesday we finish up with a self defence demonstration in the school gym…nothing where the kids are going to be giving each other black eyes, but get them making some noise and show them how to jab and where, and take someone along with you who you can throw down onto the mat. Win them over with a couple of flips.”

“The flips look better if the defender is larger than the attacker, the students will think it’s more impressive…could I tempt you Sir?”

“You want to flip me on school mats?” Neil asked with a raised brow and a blanched expression, as Ellen chuckled with her head turned down towards her lap. He really did baulk, just like Danni said. So she wasn’t alone in disliking the idea after all.

“Well I would have brought my wife down to the city and she would have done it,” Cameron explained. “But the former Senior Constable Piper hasn’t been well…and if she can get me onto my knees, you can…and that sounded way less dirty in my head. I didn’t mean onto my knees, not like that. Sorry Sir,” he added. “It’s been a really long day, with the drive down.”

Ellen laughed more loudly, no longer trying to hide how entertaining and embarrassingly endearing she found Cameron’s conversation with the Inspector. Neil smirked in her direction.

“Ellen,” he announced. “He’s one of yours. You’re a woman. You could claim to be his boss. You find this conversation so hilarious, why don’t you flip him?”

Ellen immediately stopped laughing and her mouth dropped open.

“Neil, I thought-”

“No, no, hear me out before you flip out,” Neil said. “That’s the wrong kind of flip, that’s the kind we don’t want. What if we deal with it like this…and you think about it over tonight and tell me tomorrow if you’re still not comfortable. What if, first thing on Monday, you rock up with Cameron and we set aside the first five minutes for a police statement about Kiera. They’ll all be curious, they’ll all be wanting to know a little more about why we’re there and what we want, as well as more information on their friend’s death…they’re inquisitive teens so let’s give it to them. You just fed Cameron a statement, you can just as easily address the class…just imagine it’s a press conference and they’re journalists, not teenagers. Then, you leave. Poof!”

“What’s the point of that?” Cameron asked. 

“We give them a taste of contact with a highly professional policewoman deep inside the investigation into Kiera’s murder, just a taste. They can see her, they can hear from her, and remember that if Kiera did confide in one of her friends she may have even shown the friend this footage of her…they may recognize you, Ellen.”

“Oh,” Ellen said with a small frown. “I didn’t think about it like that. Shit.”

“Someone in that class, in that first five minutes, might recognize you. We dangle you in front of them, but then you leave, or maybe you simply just sit in the corner and watch, and Cameron does the rest. He does the talk on Monday about online safety and grooming, then on Tuesday he comes into the school alone and does the talk on physical safety, they’re wondering where you are, and then on Wednesday…suddenly you’re back to help with the demonstration. You kick his ass on the exercise mat, show these kids that you mean business, and you don’t have to stay for teaching them how to make noise during an assault, okay? You don’t have to stay for that bit if it’s traumatising…you just come back into the room at the end for questions, maybe.”

“I don’t know,” Ellen mumbled. She crossed her legs and clutched the files in her lap. She hated that stupid T word when it was used to describe herself! “I just have one concern. I mean I understand that this was always a pivotal role for me and I really just crashed yesterday with some anxiety around doing it, but…Neil, can I be frank?”

“Of course,” he said. “You’re amongst friends. It doesn’t leave this room.”

“One of the main reasons I wanted to avoid the school talks is I’m concerned about flashbacks.” Screw it, she thought. If they all thought she was traumatised, so be it.

“Have you had any?” Neil asked. Ellen shook her head honestly. 

“My main problem has been my memory about what happened. I know it’s in my head because I know the statement I gave you the day after the assault, but I actually can’t grasp that memory anymore. I’m afraid I will grasp it in front of those children.”

“What if I’m there with you Mac?” Cameron asked gently. “You wouldn’t be there on your own. If we went with Neil’s idea, Monday will be rehearsed, really well prepared, and you and I can do a mat session for Wednesday and choreograph everything, I’ll tell you what I’m going to get them to do…practising shouting no and bugger off really loudly and all of that. So when you hear it, you’ll know-”

“Hearing a hundred students practising something that I couldn’t even do myself-”

“It’ll bring it back,” Neil said, finishing her thought for her. Ellen sighed and nodded.

“That’s my worry. So far…I have not flipped out over this. I’ve been okay, I’ve taken a break, I’m healthy and I have support…but I’ve never done a school talk before. I don’t think this is how I should be starting.”

“I’ll be with you, Mac,” Cameron said. “These kids, there’s no shame in telling them exactly who you are, especially if there is one person in that year level who already knows who you are, now suddenly all their peers are talking about you. That’s some powerful motivation to blab...then they get to watch you kick the crap out of me. You’re interesting, you have a job they’ll think is exciting, and you’ll come across as a really successful, interesting adult woman. What if there’s a terrified seventeen year old girl in that class, scared that if she tells anyone what Kiera told her she’s going to be killed…what if we can convince her that it’s okay, that we can protect her? I mean…I actually only know what Danni briefed me on yesterday, with this investigation and what you’re hoping to achieve, but that is how she sold it to me.”

“Oscar, I know these things,” Ellen said on a sigh. Tears filled her eyes and she frowned to fight them back furiously. Actually, if she was honest with herself she hadn’t given it much thought beyond not wanting to do it. She hadn’t imagined a scared seventeen year old girl in the class…she had been a scared seventeen year old girl once, and she hadn’t said a word. No one ever made her feel safe enough to speak, so she made her own kind of safety net within herself and within her profession. What if there was a girl in the class who knew nothing of Kiera, but she was scared of her own brother, or a dad, or a person online who wouldn’t leave her alone? Did her own anxiety, her own fear that these judgmental little adults could call her weak for failing to protect herself, really outweigh all of that potential good? 

Cameron reached out to touch her knee in support but she held up a hand and stubbornly shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said. She looked to Neil as her frown deepened; it held her face in place. “Can I think about it?”

“Yes. And if it’s not right for you then Cameron can do it on his own. We’ll get Fleur to go with him for the flipping…a tiny little redhead like her, she can take him.”

“I can see it working,” Ellen said. “I just need to process.”

“Take your time. Danni’s going to assume I bullied you into this and that is not what I want either of you to feel.”

“No, no, I understand how important this is, I understand how useful I could be…”

“If it helps,” Cameron said thoughtfully. “It might actually be good if you’re visibly nervous. I know it’s not how you would want to appear at all, but it wouldn’t hurt.”

“I agree,” Neil said. “But no pressure.”

Ellen rolled her eyes and smirked at him. 

“Obviously you’re a pro at these school talks Neil,” she told him facetiously. “So you know just what to say to reassure a novice like myself.”

“Ha-ha,” Neil said with a chuckle. 

Ellen looked over at Cameron, narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, and grimaced. 

“I like the plan,” she said. “I do. I want to help, I just don’t want to be involved in giving these kids advice about how to avoid a physical assault. It’s too soon. You don’t know how burnt out I still am, Cam, I came really close to chucking it in and I just don’t have the energy to fake it. I didn’t follow any of the advice I would be giving them, it wouldn’t be right for me to stand up there and spruik it like an expert.”

“Mac,” Cameron said with an affectionate smile. “You don’t see it, do you? None of this stuff is textbook in real life, I know you know that. I remember Peter Church having to strip naked just to prove he wasn’t wearing a wire one time…luckily we had him under visual surveillance from a distance, that was a treat, but it’s not in the rule book either. Nothing went wrong that day, but it went wrong on other days. If you hadn’t fought as hard as you did that night, you wouldn’t be sitting here now, and that is a fact. It’s also one of the first things Angie said when we heard what had happened, she said the way you fought saved your life. I know you’re not a hundred percent and maybe you won’t be and that’s cool, but trust me, you did bloody great.”

“Thanks Oscar,” Ellen said softly as she blushed and frowned again. 

“Yeah, well I practised saying that in the car so I’m glad it came off better than the being on my knees bit with the Inspector.”

Ellen laughed, grateful for Cameron’s comic timing and the easygoing way he just slipped in a joke to lighten the mood. She missed being around them all every day, she knew she was still trying to adjust to that change as well. They were a family, they had been her family, she had put them all in that old warehouse together, and she didn’t see them every day anymore. It would never be like it was, and that was sad. 

What if she could work with Cameron one last time, and maybe even let herself have a little fun? He made it sound fun, and while the previous plan relied on her delivering all three sessions on her own, this plan did seem to use her more effectively. And less.

“Okay,” she said on a deep inhalation. “I’ll do it. I’ll update the senior class on the case, I’ll make a plea for information, I’ll let Cameron do his thing the rest of the time, and I’ll make an appearance on the Wednesday…we’ll see what happens once they’ve had a couple of days to think about what I’ve said.”

“Good,” Neil said with a smile. “And if you freeze, just make sure you and Cameron go over that in advance, I’m sure he can just get you somewhere safe and take over.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Cameron said. “You can even sit on a stool or something to talk, it’s not a big deal. You tell them who you are and they won’t mind, they’ll respect you.”

“Ha,” Ellen said. There were some moments when she barely respected herself.

“Now,” Neil said as he clapped his hands together. “When you tell Danni about this little conversation and our new plan, please don’t make it sound like I coerced either of you into it. I merely suggested a compromise that we’re all fairly happy with.”

“Scared of Detective Mayo, are you mate?” Cameron asked with a bemused chuckle. 

“Just a little,” he said. “She’s still braiding my daughter’s hair and if I upset her and she stops showing up at seven-thirty every morning before school, I am gonna be in trouble at work and at home.”

“Speaking of home,” Ellen said as she stood. “I’d like to show Cam the safe house surveillance room. If he’s got some free time in the next few days he can hang out in there…he’s one of those rare policemen who like school talks and surveillance.”

“Give the man a medal,” Neil said with a smirk as Cameron chuckled. “Off you go then, thanks for coming in again Cameron, and Ellen, thank you. I appreciate your persistence, and your honesty.” 

“As I think I said the other night,” Ellen said with a sad, accepting smile. “Those two things are pretty much all I’ve got left, so I do intend to make the most of them. Goodnight. You should go home, to your kids.”

“That is exactly what I plan to do. Cameron, do you have somewhere you can stay?”

“I’m staying with Danni,” he said.

“I have her set of spare keys,” Ellen explained. Neil nodded happily and they left. 

“He seems a nice guy,” Cameron said as he followed Ellen down the hall towards the closed surveillance room. “Danni likes working for him. You get on well with him?”

“Yes, we first met years ago when he was just a Detective like Danni is now.”

“So you’re in a safe house too?” he asked quietly. Ellen pressed her lips together and nodded. There was no one else this far down the hall, no one could hear them. “Ange and I,” Cameron continued. “We figured you’d gone into protection with Pete – the holiday – convenient timing and all, and that you were probably still under guard.”

“That’s about right,” she said, though the holiday had been far from the worst way to put some distance between her private and professional lives. “The break was required for other personal reasons too,” she added softly. “I had just lost my unit.”

“Yeah, I understand. We all feel it, every day. Ange as well. It’s been tough.”

“Well…for what it’s worth I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stick around to see out the end with you all, I just couldn’t stay once I got out of that hospital and had nowhere safe to be in the short term. Also, I’m glad it’s not just me who feels it, the unit’s loss.”

“We’re still a team Mac,” he said. “Let me help, yeah?” he asked. She nodded. Yeah.


	13. Chapter 13

THIRTEEN

“Here we go,” Danni said as she opened her wallet and removed a photograph of a very young blonde girl looking vaguely at the camera. She handed it to Paula Rudonikis as they sat at the older woman’s kitchen table. “This is Taylor.”

“Oh, she’s beautiful,” Paula gushed. She smiled up at Danni and Peter. “Can I ask what happened, if, if the cannabis was working?”

“She had a few other medical problems,” Peter said. “We were really lucky to have the time with her that we did.”

“She was very sick,” Danni added. “We know that’s…well, that’s very different to your own beautiful daughter’s situation. She was healthy?”

“Oh yes, very,” Paula said. “I was always so worried when she was younger, but she was athletic and kind and popular, she never got sick, she certainly did not have epilepsy like her old mum here…she didn’t hold it against me though.”

“Oh, I’m sure she didn’t.”

“It is a lot more difficult without her. It can be very lonely.”

“Do any of her friends visit?” Danni asked. “You know, school friends, or family friends you know as well?”

“No, no one. She had friends of course, lots of them, but they’re just children too…what are they going to say to me, you know? I spoke to some of them at the funeral, but I was still in shock that day and I wasn’t coping…and I don’t remember a word of what was said the entire day…I just remember the music.”

“The police haven’t been harassing you, have they?” Peter asked.

“Not anymore,” Paula said on a sad sigh. “I almost miss it. They were always very kind even when they were suggesting that Kiera was ‘into drugs’, whatever that means…handing them out to her school friends like lollies or something. I told them, she only got drugs for me, just a bit of weed once or twice a month, never anything like heroin or ecstasy, and we don’t even have the money for any of that. Those drugs are expensive, aren’t they?”

“They can be,” Danni said with a thoughtful frown, as though she didn’t quite know. “I think cocaine is fairly expensive too…trendy.”

“Pfft,” Paula said as she rolled her eyes and sighed again. “What a waste of cash. I told those detectives, if Kiera and I had that kind of cash, don’t you think we’d buy some new furniture and try to make life a bit more comfortable? Kiera saved up so hard for her entire life to buy that car second-hand…all her birthday money, from the time she was six. She used to say, ‘I know you can’t drive mummy so one day I’m going to buy a car and I can take you on excursions!’ It was so cute. She did it, too.”

“What’s going to happen to the car?” Peter asked. It was still sitting in the driveway. 

“I’ll have to sell it. I don’t want to, but the money will be of more use to me. I have other things to remember her by, like her teddy bear, photographs…her clothes.”

“I hope they find who hurt her,” Danni said. “Ian and I go for walks some afternoons and that park is always deserted now, in an area where you’d expect to find people out and about. It’s just awful.”

“The police are still trying,” Paula said. “I get updates.”

“What are they doing?” Peter asked. “If they don’t have anything yet…pretty bloody useless, right?”

“Maybe. I…I got asked if I wanted to come and talk to her class this week, but I said no. They think one of her friends might know something, I suppose, though the police interviewed all of them already…I don’t want to be a spectacle, though.”

“Oh Paula, you wouldn’t be,” Danni said gently. That was a bit like Ellen, she thought. Neither of them wanted to parade their apparent failure to protect themselves and others around in front of a hundred teenagers. That’s not what this was, but it was how they felt. 

“No, I trust the police to handle things like that,” Paula said. “It’s their job. All I did was lose a daughter, she just went out for her regular morning run and never came back. They’re the ones who have to find out why.”

“So it was a regular thing?” Peter asked, as though he didn’t know. 

“Yes,” Paula said softly. “I think someone had been watching her. They knew her route, they knew where she would be. At the time, there were these stories in the news about women being bashed and touched up in parks, but that was all happening on the other side of the city, I didn’t think it would happen here. Kiera always ran with her headphones on, so she wouldn’t have heard someone come up behind her.”

“The police caught that man, didn’t they?” Danni asked.

“Yes, but they’re now positive that it’s not the same. Kiera was killed by someone else. They don’t know who, and they can’t tell me why. She was such a good girl, Bek. The only bad thing she has ever done, the only law she has ever broken, is in buying me those drugs from our friend Lachlan, the poor man…he’s gone too.”

“I can’t believe he killed himself,” Danni said softly. “He was such a good person.”

“Good people get depressed too, Bek,” Peter reminded her. 

“Yes but Lachlan?” she asked. “He was actually doing something to help, which is more than I can say for a lot of other people in this city.”

“That’s true, he never even charged us much,” Paula said. “In the end it was practically free. I suppose he got his income from other people, rich people…sometimes I wonder if he blamed himself for Kiera’s death, but when I asked the police if he knew something, they couldn’t tell me because Lachlan never told them…if he knew anything, he took it with him. I hope that’s not true.”

“Maybe he was scared,” Danni said quietly. 

“We’re all scared, Bek,” Paula replied. “If Kiera was being watched…I still feel as though someone is watching me sometimes. I don’t even leave the house anymore.”

“Did Kiera ever say she felt like she was being watched?” Danni asked. 

“No…but a confident seventeen year old might not notice, right? I wish I’d told her to be more careful, not to run the same way at the same time every day, things like that.”

“It’s not your fault Paula,” Peter said. “And just because she’s a girl, she’s got the right to go running where and how she wants.”

“Yes, she has the right. It doesn’t automatically mean it’s safe though, does it? Somebody killed her.”

*

“At what point do we admit the mother knows nothing and move on?” Peter asked Danni later that night as he lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling. 

“I’m confident that she lied to the police about knowing Lachlan,” Danni said. She sat on the arm of the chair by Peter’s feet and looked down at him. “She pretended not to know his name when we first told her, but it’s obvious that she did know the man.”

“She’s probably just afraid of being charged for the drugs.”

“Maybe,” Danni said. 

“If Kiera had told her mum about feeling in real trouble, then Paula would have told us that. There would have been a look, a hesitation…there was nothing but her answer.”

“That girl’s face was bashed in by someone who knew her,” Danni said. “Her facial injuries were far worse than the injuries the women in the other park sustained when they were assaulted, not to mention the broken neck. Her attacker knew her, or was being instructed by someone who knew her.”

“What I still don’t understand,” Peter said. “Is that if Kiera and Mac were both attacked by the same person…is Mac okay just because she was able to fight back, or did this bloke chicken out at the last minute? Was he too tired? Elle has always said that the assault felt mechanical, that this guy seemed like he had training, she felt like she was in an old academy drill and that his movements were almost predictable. I always assumed that was partly because she was in shock and partly true, but would someone with that kind of training really tire mid-fight, or chicken out?”

“I don’t know,” Danni said softly. “Maybe. He might care for her more, maybe he didn’t want to kill her. Or maybe he felt like he ran out of time and had to abandon the attempt. We were just down the street. If he had lingered even an extra thirty seconds we might have seen him running away, another minute and we might have caught him.”

“Oh don’t say that,” Peter said as he covered his face with his hands. “Another minute and she might be dead just as easily. I just…if you’re going to attack a policewoman while she’s on duty on a surveillance operation that you have to know about to even find her there in the first place…why rely on your bare hands? Why not bring a knife or a gun? Was he really just trying to make it look like one of the others? Was that his brilliant idea?”

“That brilliant idea worked,” Danni reminded him. “It worked long enough for the rain to wash away any evidence we might have found otherwise.”

“This person had inside knowledge, so why Kiera?” Peter asked. “Coincidence? Chance? Did they see a schoolgirl on the street and think, ‘yep, her’?”

“Paula’s handling this well,” Danni said, choosing not to answer. The truth was they didn’t yet know, and Peter was just blowing off steam, trying to focus on Kiera’s death and not Ellen’s assault. “She seems to be bearing up. It’s sad that she’s alone.”

“Everyone can find themselves alone at different points in their life,” Peter said. “It’s how you handle it that matters. Been there, done that.”

“Well you won’t be alone like that again for a long time,” Danni said playfully as she squeezed his nearby ankle and gave his foot a little shake. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” he said with a soft smile as he met her eyes and blushed slightly. “I’m really happy.”

“I can tell. You couldn’t wipe the silly grin off your face all morning. Quite pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”

“Ahuh.” He grinned broadly as she chuckled. 

“Are you going to get a ring?” she asked. 

“Yep, I got one.”

“What? You do?” Danni asked as she leapt to her feet. There definitely had not been a ring on Ellen’s finger. “Where is it? Are you waiting for a better time or what?”

“No,” Peter said. He sat up and laughed as he waved a dismissive hand about his face. “I didn’t have it with me last night, okay? I’ve had it since just after we started going out to breakfast together, in the month before the assault. After the first brekky I just knew that this was it this time…I could see it in her eyes as well, you know? So I went out for a browse and I found something, and I’ve had it on me ever since. It was never the right time while we were away, and when we got here…I didn’t want to leave it in the other house where she might find it without me there, so it’s here.”

“It’s here?” Danni asked. “And you haven’t showed it to me yet? Peter Church!”

“I didn’t know I was required to get your approval!” Peter said on a laugh. “And before you ask, the answer is no, I am not showing it to you until it is on my fiancée’s finger, okay? Patience, petal.”

Danni growled playfully as Peter laughed and flopped back on the couch. She trudged off down the hallway but Peter was quick to call out, “You won’t find it! You’ll have to search me!”

“You’re incorrigible.”

*

“You’re engaged?” Cameron asked as he looked from the cameras in front of him to Ellen beside him. Her elbows were on the desk and her face was covered by both hands as she nodded, wholly embarrassed that they had just witnessed that. Peter and Danni had completely forgotten where they were, or they had forgotten that she had been planning to take Cameron in there and sit with him to talk about the case.

Woops.

She nodded and when she raised her head she could feel her cheeks burning. She did her best not to smile too much as she looked into Cameron’s surprised, gleeful eyes. 

“Mac, why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “Congratulations! When did this happen?”

“Last night,” she said. She allowed him to pull her into a firm hug. “Thanks, but just…hang on…” She pulled out her phone and started writing a text message, as Cameron looked on and laughed. 

‘What’s this about a RING?’ she wrote. She sent the message and waited, and sure enough in two seconds Peter felt his phone vibrating and pulled it out of the back pocket of his jeans. 

“Ah shit!” he exclaimed on the couch. “Sorry Mac, Ellen! Surprise!” he called out.

“What?” Danni asked as she walked back into the living room. “Who are you talking to?”

“Your friend and my fiancée who just heard our little conversation!” He held up his phone for emphasis and pointed up to where the camera was. 

“Oh!” Danni said as her eyes went wide. “Sorry, I just thought it would be Novie tonight, but you’re the one who brought it up!”

“No I didn’t, you asked.”

“Well you’re an undercover cop, right? Lie.”

“I’m not going to lie about that.”

Ellen smirked while Cameron continued to laugh. 

‘This could go on for awhile,’ she typed. ‘I’m taking Cam to his temporary home and heading home myself. Goodnight sweetheart.’

Peter sighed as he read the message and quickly typed back. 

‘Sorry Elle, I will do this properly when we get a moment ALONE together. Say hi to Stoney, take care, and I love you.’

She quickly replied that she loved him too before they packed up and left Peter and Danni with a few minutes to themselves, genuinely, before Novie was due to begin his night shift. 

They drove their respective cars to Danni’s home, and it wasn’t until Ellen let him into the secure, modern apartment with Danni’s spare keys and handed them over that Cameron decided to ask a personal question of his former boss. 

“So, how long have you and Pete been an item?”

“Um…about four months,” she answered. “But there’s a lot of history there too. We…there was a year, about seven or eight years ago, a year of us together.”

“Before Christina Rossi?” Cameron asked wisely. Ellen winced and nodded. “Got it.”

“You knew?” she asked cautiously. 

“We suspected,” he said. “What happened?”

“Bernie Rocca also suspected and gave me a choice and I made it.”

“And Peter wasn’t happy and hopped into bed with Christina as fast as he could?”

“Something like that,” Ellen said as she looked at him with a wary grimace. “She is dead, Cam. She’s been dead for seven years.”

“Oh, I know, I know, it would never have worked out anyway. This just helps to explain why Church went so crazy around that point, going on about retiring with this mob boss’ sister and sailing the world with her and blah blah blah. He went completely off the rails…I guess he was a little bummed out.”

“Uh…perhaps,” Ellen said, not wanting to give too much away about Peter’s own feelings on the matter. They weren’t hers to give. “He’s, uh, not bummed out anymore,” she said instead. 

Cameron laughed loudly and nodded with a broad, bemused grin on his face.

“Yeah, I figured that! He went out and got you a ring after your first real date, eh?”

“Oh shush!” she said with a laugh as her face flushed. “Honestly!”

“Can I tell Angie?” Cameron asked more seriously and softly all of a sudden. “I put on my undercover operative hat on the way over, and I figured that you and Peter are actually keeping this thing under wraps for safety reasons. I mean, you didn’t say a word about a relationship at the wedding…I didn’t even see the two of you holding hands! It’s probably best if no one knows you’re together outside the immediate circle of trust, right? That way they can’t try to go after him as a way to get to you?”

“Yes,” Ellen said. “But you can tell Angie.”

“Oh good, because she’s convinced nothing is going on and Peter just whisked you away into our own form of mandated protective custody for a few months, but I take it that was actually a pre-planned trip of sorts to, uh, reconnect away from work?”

“Something like that,” Ellen quipped with a small smile. Cameron chuckled and reached out to affectionately rub her back.

“Really happy for you Mac,” he said. “This conversation I had with Church finally makes sense too, back when we were running the surveillance op in the park and he and I were in the van. We were talking about the restructure and kids and stuff, and I was saying how I really wanted a family, a wife and kids…and I thought that Peter would agree, cos he always had in the past, but instead he said that he wasn’t going to go out chasing any young woman just to have kids anymore, because he was older now and if he met someone that he loved and who loved him it wouldn’t matter as much as he’d always thought…and he was watching you running around that park like a dag…I guess that was a little clue he’d already made up his mind.”

“I guess,” Ellen said with a thoughtful frown as her heart hammered in her chest. She didn’t know what to say to that, honestly, because she could picture herself with Peter’s children but she just didn’t know if it would happen, or if it was truly what they both wanted, and with Angie pregnant and Cameron going to be a dad…she also didn’t want them to think that they were somehow just a few steps ahead. They wouldn’t think that, of course, they weren’t those kinds of people, but the drive was there to find her own private path and stick to it, and she knew that was what Peter wanted too. They were their own family, different to Cameron and Angie. Not as safe.

“Sorry,” Cameron said when he sensed that he had overstepped and Ellen had drifted off deep in thought. “Too much information?”

“No, it’s fine,” Ellen assured him with a smile as she snapped back to attention. “We’re just taking things a day at a time. You can tell Ange, just tell her…quietly.”


	14. Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

Ellen was not sure she had ever been as nervous as she was, waiting in the wings of the school hall on Monday morning with Cameron beside her. He was dressed in full uniform while she was in her best navy suit with a cream blouse. She took a deep breath as she listened to the noise building just around the corner, as the entire senior year filed into the hall and took their seats. 

She was proud that she had made the decision to come in the end, and she had gotten through the weekend without a single panic attack, mostly by reassuring herself that she really only would be speaking for a few minutes.

“I actually don’t know why this is such a big deal for me,” she mumbled to Cameron. 

“Too many years in Undercover,” he replied immediately in a soft voice. “Ten years hiding yourself away, or if you were in public, putting on an act; a brave face, new name, different job, different you. You can’t do that anymore.”

“Is that how you feel?” she asked. 

“Sometimes, but the uniform helps,” he said. “People’s eyes stop at the uniform. When it’s on, they’re not looking at my face thinking they might know me from that hippie dive bar five years ago when I was someone else. They just see a copper.”

“So you actually feel safer in uniform?”

“Ironic, but true,” he said. “How are you doing? We’ve got a stool out there for you if you get nervous and want to perch.”

“Thanks.” She frowned slightly and looked up into his eyes. “Thanks for not making fun of me.”

“Mac, never,” he assured her. He hesitated, smirked, and added, “At least not about stuff like this. I might make fun of you marrying Church…no promises.”

She chuckled and nodded. She probably deserved a joke or two. 

“But what I’m going to do now is I’ll say g’day and give them a rundown of the next three days, why we’re there, and then I’ll hand over to you. Nice and easy. Once you’re done, all you have to do is sit and role model excellent listening skills.”

“I’ve had lots of practice on surveillance,” she equipped under her breath as he chuckled and nodded. On the stage, the head of year level had finally quietened everyone down and was giving them an introduction. 

In just minutes, Cameron was handing Ellen the microphone on stage as she sat neatly on her stool to address the group of ninety-odd students, boys and girls between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. She smiled as Cameron handed her the microphone, used her trembling spare hand to tuck one side of her hair behind her ear, and then she looked out at the audience and tried to imagine that she was addressing a hundred police recruits who automatically respected her for her rank instead. 

“Good morning,” she said. “As Senior Constable Pierce has said, I’m here today to update you on the investigation into Kiera’s murder…and I’ve somehow also been roped into helping him with his slide show.” She plastered a bemused frown on her face and looked over at Cameron to ask, “How did that happen?” 

The students laughed as Cameron playfully shrugged and Ellen took a deep breath. So far, so good, she thought. 

“Uh, now I remember when I was at school and the cops came to talk to us about some of the things we’re going to talk to you about over the next few days, things like how to be safe when you’re out at night, and no one really took it too seriously. It wasn’t going to happen to us, right? Some of what you’ll learn, some of what we’ll get you to do, like practising a loud refusal, it can seem pretty silly in a hypothetical context…which is why I didn’t say that I was here to update you on the investigation into Kiera’s death; I said we’re here to talk about her murder.” 

She paused, and there was absolute silence in the hall. She took another breath. 

“So far,” she said simply. “We do not know who killed your classmate. We have permission from the school not to sugar-coat this, and you’re all old enough to hear the truth. Kiera was killed in a very violent assault. She was beaten with a rock and her neck was broken. That same day, later that day, I was also assaulted during a police operation…we believe by the same man. I survived by a mixture of luck and good training, or good timing. Both of our assaults made the news, but I’m the one who got to walk away, which is why I’m here today to make the following appeal. 

“We believe that Kiera was in trouble,” she continued. “We believe that she trusted someone or that she was forced to trust someone who was not a very good person. In the days before she died, Kiera was responsible for publishing my name and photographs of me online, asking for money in exchange for more specific information that would help people to track me down. I’ve been a police officer for fifteen years, and as a Detective Senior Sergeant, there are a lot of people who would very much like to know where I live…it seemed like she was prepared to tell them. 

“But I don’t know Kiera, I didn’t know her, and she didn’t know me. I also was not assaulted at my home, so what she did, did not lead to my injuries. We don’t blame Kiera for this, I don’t blame her for exposing me; we think she was forced into it. We think she felt that she had no other option. We think that the person who killed her wanted me, they always wanted me, and they were willing to use your classmate, a young girl with a good heart, to make sure that I was killed and that the decision could not be traced back to them. If things had been different, I could very easily be dead and Kiera would be accused of being an accessory to murder, or perhaps even my killer. That’s not what we want…we want to know who was behind this, who put her in that position, who picked up a rock and beat her repeatedly in the face, until almost every bone from her neck up was broken. 

“Now most of you, I dare say, didn’t really know Kiera. You sat a few rows back in English or you’d cheered her on in cross country or you’d seen her walking around the local streets with her mum, who is very sick. But some of you did know Kiera. You sat next to her, you shared your lunch breaks together, you ran together. The police, up until this point, have been disappointed by the lack of information we’ve received. According to her neighbours, no one saw or heard anything. According to those of you we’ve spoken to, nothing was wrong, there was no reason to kill her. 

“We’re here today to tell you, definitively, that there was a reason, and we think that Kiera confided in someone. We don’t know who, maybe her mum, maybe her friends, maybe someone else in her life who we just don’t know about. Sometimes, people don’t tell police anecdotes about murder victims because they think that what they have to say isn’t important…or because they’re scared that someone nasty is going to find out what they’ve shared, and maybe then they’ll be in danger too. I understand those feelings…I’ve spent the last week terrified of speaking to you about some of this protective behaviours content because just a few months ago it didn’t necessarily work for me, so why would you think anything I had to say was important at all? And I’m still in danger, because what you all put on the internet…it doesn’t just go away.

“So this is our appeal for information, my personal appeal. I want to make sure that Kiera isn’t remembered as the girl who outed a police officer…we know that she was better than that, we know that she was a kind and generous and fairly brave young woman. I want to find out why she did it, why she felt that she had no choice, and who was the person pressuring her from behind the veil. Only once we know these things will we be able to find out who killed her. If you know something, please, you must tell us. Did Kiera seem worried, distracted, did she say anything to you that felt ‘off’, did you see her with anyone in an encounter that seemed unusual? Sometimes the most complicated cases are solved by the simplest of statements. If you don’t think it’s important, let us decide that for ourselves. If you’re afraid, let us help you. 

“Now I’ve probably talked for far too long about this but before I hand back to Senior Constable Pierce to talk about your online safety, there’s just one more thing. You’ve now heard me up here talking about how serious this is and how we believe that Kiera confided in someone and we need that person or those people to come forward. That may well be the case, but to those of you who did not know her well, do not harass her friends. I remember what being a teenager is like, do not try to bully your peers into ‘giving up what they know’ for a laugh…they may know nothing, they may feel incredibly guilty for that. Alternately, what Kiera was involved with is serious, there are people involved in this who are dangerous…who are trying to get police officers killed. So there could be someone sitting in this hall today who very genuinely is in fear for their own lives if they speak.

“The truth about how someone is feeling will most likely be hidden, shared only with close friends or not at all. You will not know it to look at them. So do not harass anyone. Do not make this situation any worse, and your teachers will be watching you. I know you are all grieving, but it is difficult to lose a friend…at any age, I assure you. Be adult. Imagine if this was your best friend the police were coming to talk to you about. Imagine how you would feel if you knew nothing, or alternately if you did know something very important. Either way, it’s not a good feeling, is it?

“And finally for those of you who are sitting there and listening to me and thinking that you want to say something but you don’t know how or you haven’t had the opportunity or the freedom to speak truthfully, my name again – and I can shout it from the rooftops now since it’s on the Internet for all to see – is Ellen Mackenzie. I am a Detective Senior Sergeant, and I can be found at police headquarters in the city. Your school, your teachers and the principal, can also reach me. You could walk into any police station and ask to be put in touch with me. Or, after today, I’ll be back on Wednesday…to help Senior Constable Pierce with his slides again.”

There were a few laughs and Ellen sighed and offered them a smile.

“Thank you for being so attentive. I know this is somewhat personal for me, but I put that to one side. My mission is this. We must find out who planned this, and who killed Kiera. They wanted to use her, and they murdered her. Rest assured we will not stop asking questions or asking for help until we have that person or the people responsible in custody. If you are afraid to come forward…well I’m pretty bloody terrified still, so we can be afraid together and we can protect you. Thank you.” 

She held the microphone back out to Cameron and he took it with a smile as the students clapped. Ellen didn’t think she had been talking about a very applause-worthy topic, but then again she was a speaker at a school and it was routine. She took a deep breath and smoothed her sweaty palms up and down her navy skirt a few times, while Cameron took over and shifted the conversation in the direction of how people contacted children or teenagers online, why that happened, and how to spot the warning signs or prevent it. Ellen was sure they were about to scare the pants off some very confident yet equally vulnerable adolescents with some tough real life lessons, but with their friend dead maybe it was right to remind them that this bullshit went on every day, and it happened to even the smartest of children and adults alike.

*

“How did it go?” Neil asked when Ellen knocked on his office door and led Cameron in as well. Danni was right behind them.

“I think it went well,” Cameron said. “I mean, kids these days get the cyber safety talk fairly frequently from schools and parents, but it doesn’t hurt to go over it again, especially in the context of saying, ‘look, we think this is something that was happening with one of your classmates, it’s okay to talk about it’.”

“Yes they were all attentive and seemed interested,” Ellen added. “No one approached us afterwards but they’re not about to do that in a room full of a hundred pairs of eyes all watching for someone to break rank. I gave them a few options of how to contact me discreetly.”

“Good, good,” Neil said. “And, uh…no issues, Ellen?”

“No, I was fine,” she assured him with a smile. “The stool was a good idea, thanks Cam.”

“You’re welcome. She came across great,” he told Danni as well. “Had the kids hanging on every word out of her mouth by the end of it. The appeal was fierce, honest, fast, I loved it.”

“It’s okay Cam, don’t hurt yourself,” Ellen said with a laugh as she blushed. “It was fine,” she said more modestly. “It was just a few minutes!”

“Terrific,” Danni said with a grin. “I knew you could do it.”

“Well I genuinely could not have gone on to do what Cameron then did, those few minutes took enough out of me, so I appreciate the assistance and the chance to play back-up for once.”

“What now?” Neil asked.

“We keep going,” Ellen explained. “Cameron returns tomorrow to talk drugs and alcohol and consent and sexual assault, and then on Wednesday I’ll go back with him for some self defence. I won’t be in the room for all of it, just the start and end.”

“Any progress with those additional files you retrieved from the archives?” he asked.

“Not really,” she admitted. “I was in charge for five years, and I’d been second-in-charge for about three years before that, and in that time I interviewed and rejected forty-three applications for transfer, which came from all over the State. Some of those people went on to be accepted by other undercover units, some went back to general duties, some have now retired, or they’re in other squads. Again, none of them particularly stand out to me. In rejecting them, I was just doing my job.”

“Why were they rejected by you?”

“Uh, various reasons,” she said. “I’ve made a summary list. Some were rejected because of their age or physical appearance. For example, we had Angie, so we didn’t really need another twenty-something blonde-haired, blue-eyed female officer-”

“But you hired Danni,” Cameron pointed out obviously. “Blonde hair, green eyes-”

“Not twenty-something,” Danni said with a wry laugh. “I’m the older, bustier type.”

“I chose Danni because I saw her potential and because I thought she would fit in well, personality-wise,” Ellen said simply. “It sounds unfair and arbitrary, it’s not always based on merit. A lot of the time I rejected people because I didn’t think they would fit, that’s all. It was nothing to do with them being incompetent cops or dodgy people. I couldn’t hire any older alpha males, for example, because looking at their files I knew they would clash with Peter, and I didn’t want any young cocky types who were too fresh out of the academy, because they wouldn’t be able to jump straight in and cope. In a unit like ours, we survive on trust. We all have to be comfortable with each other, we all have to be able to turn our backs and know that the person behind us has us covered. We managed that, we had extraordinarily low turnover compared to other units, Peter is the longest-serving undercover operative in the State, but that consistency and our consequent safety record didn’t come without me rejecting a lot of applicants. In that eight years, I only hired one person.”

“That would be me,” Danni said proudly. 

“Yes,” Ellen said in earnest. “That’s how picky I was. Now…some of the officers I rejected might have felt a bit hard done by at the time – I didn’t earn nicknames like the Ice Queen and Frigid Bitch for nothing – but there wasn’t anyone who I looked at and thought, ‘Gee, you’re crazy, in eight years this is really going to come back to bite me in the ass’. Until we have a suspect and discover that they were or were not on that list, I’m not sure how helpful it can be.”

“You’ve traced them all?” Neil asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Broadly. If they’re still in the police, I’ve noted where, and if they’ve left I haven’t gone much further than that in trying to find them, because that will take time.”

“Understood, let’s keep working on it,” Neil said. “Danni, do you agree?”

“Yes,” Danni said. “We could just run licence checks to discover their addresses, that’s probably enough for now, since if one of them is living across the road from Ellen’s old home, well that would be a major break.”

“I’ll run the checks,” Ellen assured them. “I just haven’t had time yet.”

“No, that’s fine, we have time.”

“I can help,” Cameron said. “I’m free all afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon, Mac and I are going to choreograph our routine for Wednesday, but I can stick around Wednesday afternoon and night as well, we can get through some of this background work faster that way, and it’s probably better I drive home Thursday morning anyway. Mum and Ange will worry if I’m on the road at night.”

“Aw, that’s cute,” Danni said, lightly teasing him. Cameron chuckled.

“Because of the kangaroos,” he pointed out. “And wombats. The animals don’t know the road rules.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to hit a roo,” Neil said. “Bad things happen.”

“They can fucking total a car,” Cameron agreed. “So anyway, I can help?”

“Absolutely,” Danni assured him. “I want you to review Ellen’s list and the files while she finishes up those checks on the rejects. You might spot something that she’s missed, no offence Ellen-”

“It’s fine,” she said. “Cam will be looking at all the names and photographs and my own notes with fresh eyes, he’ll probably have never heard of these officers before, whereas I have vague memories that might be affecting my assessment.”

“I’ll check for hidden crazies,” Cameron agreed with a grin. “Where’s Church?”

“At the safe house twiddling his thumbs,” Danni answered. “He is not happy that Ellen’s the one whose life is in danger and he’s the one practically sequestered, but Paula knows that he is currently out of work, that’s part of his cover, so that is where he will stay.”

“I should call him,” Ellen said. “I’ll let him know how it went.”

“Yeah, he’d appreciate that a lot,” Danni agreed. “Otherwise, great work the both of you. I have a good feeling about this, I really do.”

*

“How about you?” Cameron asked once he and Ellen were seated at the desk she had been assigned. “Do you have a good feeling about this?”

“Uh, how I feel about this whole operation varies between the panic and paranoia that comes from ten years in Covert Services, to outright apathy and a desire to sleep for a million years which is pure burnout, to a strange kind of semi-confidence that we are going to find this person and I’ll magically be saved from a life of always looking over my shoulder. Danni’s doing her best to stay positive because she is the one tugging this ship along now, and I’m just a passenger.”

“You’ll never just be a passenger, Mac.”

“Do you not hear how they talk to me?” she asked as she sat back in her chair and looked at him, with her arms folded over her chest. “And I know I deserve it. I was really struggling in the weeks before the unit closed, I was exhausted, I put everything I had into that unit and I didn’t set any part of myself aside for me or anyone, until Peter and I started dating and I realised that actually I really wanted to do that…only I had nothing to give…and the other day I had to tell my friend that actually I couldn’t deal with what she and the Head of Homicide were asking me to do. They still trust me, yes, but not as much. No one’s turning their backs and expecting me to cover them…and mostly I just feel sad about that.”

“I’m sorry,” Cameron said with a thoughtful frown. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Peter trusts me, I guess,” she said softly as she brushed her fingers over her flushed cheeks and sighed. “There’s that.”

“He more than trusts you, he friggin’ adores you. Always has, I reckon.”

“I know,” she said. 

“Well, for my part, I promise I’ll stop asking if you’re okay,” Cameron said. “You’re pretty open about this stuff now…so I trust you to tell me if you need a break.”

“Thanks, and I will. I’m getting really good at it,” she said with a droll smirk.


	15. Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

“You really should not be taking me out to dinner like this, Pete,” Ellen said as she was seated at the table near a large heat lamp and directly beside a glass fence that separated the restaurant’s outside dining area from the esplanade and the water, which was a dark silvery colour beneath a handful of stars and brighter streetlamps. 

Ellen knew exactly where they were. This was the location of their first proper date, a Sunday lunch almost four months earlier that Peter had brought her to while their colleagues had smuggled party supplies into the office so that they could celebrate her birthday. It seemed a long time ago, but she remembered the date well. It was the first time they held hands on top of a table in public. They had done so much more than hold hands in the past, but not for a long time, and that one simple act had meant so much more than almost their entire earlier affair; they had both been nervous. 

“The only person we’re concerned with right now is Paula,” Peter said as he sat opposite her and reached for her hand across the table. He remembered too, she thought. His hands were warm and reassuring. “And she doesn’t leave her house, certainly not at night time,” he said. “We’re fine, love.”

“Okay,” she said. Tears filled her eyes and she took a deep breath. “Thanks for getting me out for a few hours. Does Danni know where we are?”

“Nuh,” he said with a grin. “I told her we were somewhere else.”

“Peter!”

“What?” he asked, laughing. “I don’t want her keeping tabs on us all the time. I told her I was taking you to a restaurant across town. She didn’t need to know, nothing’s gonna happen and if it does, that’s why God invented mobile phones. We got ours.”

“True,” Ellen said with a chuckle as she squeezed his hands and then let go. Their waiter had approached and asked if they wanted drinks, and they quickly selected a red wine from the menu for the table. 

“I thought after dinner we could go for a walk?” Peter said with a hopeful lilt in his voice. 

Ellen smiled lovingly and nodded. 

“How has it been working with Cam again?” he asked as they both perused the menu.

“Great,” she said. “He seems to have really relaxed in the last few months…I suppose we all have, in our different ways. He’s just more confident and happy and he’s been quick to back me. We spent the afternoon planning for tomorrow, choreographing the self defence demo, and we had a lot of laughs in the gym. I can still take him down.”

“I’m really proud of you stepping up to do this,” Peter said with a smile. “I know you’re gonna say it’s no big deal because Cam’s come in and done most of the work of actually talking to the students, and that’s true, but it’s a big deal you pulling yourself back up this quickly after really questioning whether or not you could. You’ve not talked about your assault publicly before. I’m proud of you, Mac.”

“Thanks,” she said on a sigh. “Danni and Neil keep asking me if I’m okay, how I’m doing. I feel good about what I was able to say to the students yesterday, I’m proud of myself, but I don’t know if they truly think I’ve done a good job. I still flaked on Danni, I still needed Cam to come in and take over. Everyone has been so understanding but I’m still tired, Peter, and a big part of me still just doesn’t give a fuck, and that’s scary. I’m trying to keep my guard up, I am trying.”

“Me too,” he said. “But I don’t care that I lied to Danni about where we were going tonight. You’re not the only one who’s over the bullshit. We’re passed our use-by dates in undercover, probably past our use-by dates as cops, full stop, and we’ve been that way for more than just a few months, Elle. I’m just grateful we both came out the other side relatively unscathed, a few extra nightmares, a few extra scars, and with each other.”

“Same,” she said as she took a deep, shaky breath. Her stomach was in knots as she admitted, “I can cope with how I feel towards the job as long as I have you.”

“Oh, you have me, beautiful,” he assured her as tears filled his eyes. He quickly cleared his throat and returned his attention to the menu when he saw the waiter returning with the drinks and to ask if they were ready to order. They both decided on the lamb, and once they were alone again Peter asked, “Have you thought much about what sort of wedding you want?” 

“Not really,” she admitted. “I mean, beyond us getting up somewhere and saying I do…I haven’t even told Eve and Amy yet, I haven’t given any thought to what I’ll wear…what about you? What did you plan, with Alice and Christina?”

“Oh, different things,” he said. “Alice and I were in our twenties and this was more than twenty years ago, so we were going to do the full expected thing of the times; church wedding, she was Catholic, big event with family and friends, the whole shebang. Christina and I were just going to elope, y’know, somewhere along the way on our sailing adventure. I guess with you…what I’d really love is just what you described, nothing fancy but just…just us, being authentic, nice and quick but…real.”

“I think we can manage real,” she said with a kind smile. “Should I wear white?”

“Totally up to you,” he said. “Do you want to?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I never thought I’d get married. I never thought I’d…”

“You never thought anyone would want to marry you?” he asked. Ellen pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head. Peter stretched a hand out underneath the table to grip her knee. He smiled as she took a deep, emotional breath to calm herself.

“Sorry,” she said. 

“Don’t be. I understand, Elle, but you’re not as damaged as you’ve always told yourself. You know that, right?”

“Yep.”

“Okay,” he said gently. “Good. I’d love for you to wear a dress of some kind, only because I think it might be more important to you than you’ve thought until now, but we wear what we’re comfortable in, nothing more than that, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “I’d like to wear a dress, a white dress…just nothing too fancy.”

“Something real,” he repeated with a wise smile. “And we’ll just make this easy, the way it’s meant to be. Easy loving.”

“When should we do it?” she asked. 

“Well we can arrange a celebrant and the notice or licence anytime, we pick a date, then boom, call everyone to some patch of beach or a park and just get it done.”

“Sounds good,” Ellen said with an efficient nod. “We’ll just need to make sure we give Cam and Ange enough time to get down here.”

“Ah, that’s true, I didn’t think of that. We’ll set a proper date then, a couple of weeks in advance. Actually, I think they make you wait a few weeks anyway, a month?”

“Do we have a couple of weeks?” she asked. “We just don’t know, Pete.”

“You want to do it as soon as possible?” he asked with a raised brow. 

“I don’t want to die wondering what it would be like.”

“Elle, you won’t-”

“I might,” she said. “Not because you’re cursed like you seem to enjoy making a joke of, but because of where we are in this investigation. I want to make sure they can’t separate us, they can’t ship me off into protection without you, and that even if something does go wrong…we’ve already said everything that needs to be said.”

“Okay,” Peter said. “No wondering. I’ll start making enquiries tomorrow, but Ellen, we might not get this done in time. I’m pretty sure they’re gonna make us wait to get married once we file a notice. I mean it’s been over twenty years since I seriously looked into this, but you can’t just elope in this State. If this case goes south fast, we might be getting married without our friends, calling each other different names.”

“I know,” she said. She wiped at the wetness at the corners of her eyes. “Sorry, it really wouldn’t matter to us in the long run, I just am trying to hold onto as much of myself as I can here. I don’t really want anything else in my life to change.”

“You know that if I’m calling you Elle or Fiona or Beth or whatever, it’s the same.”

“Yeah…it’ll just be weird if I have to call you Keith or Brian or, I dunno, Richard.”

“I am not a Richard!”

“I don’t think we get a choice,” she said with a laugh as Peter also chuckled.

“We won’t have to call each other our new names all the time, though,” he said with a sly smirk as he leant forward and whispered, “I think I can still find a moment or two in the dark to whisper your name, Ellen”. 

“Same,” she said. “Like tonight?”

“Mm, maybe,” he replied with a grin. “I thought you said you were due, your period. The first few days we don’t usually-”

“I’m late,” she said. “It’s just the stress of the week, the cramps are there and I’m a few days into the sugar pills now – or I would be if I was still taking them, I should say – so maybe later tonight, tomorrow morning. I want to spend the night with you.”

“Well it’s a good thing I booked a fancy-ass hotel room for the night then,” he said. “I know you’ve got a big morning tomorrow at the school, but I thought we could still manage a glass of champagne each and a shower big enough for the both of us. I figured if you weren’t feeling great, that would still be pretty relaxing. It might help.”

“Oh, throw in a backrub and it definitely would,” she said with wide blue eyes as Peter chuckled and nodded. “You really booked a hotel room, Pete?”

“Ahuh. Danni is not going to be happy when you don’t come home tonight!”

“Well then,” she said with a quaint smile and twinkling eyes. “I’m there.”

*

“Peter, this is really lovely,” Ellen said three hours later as she stood at the hotel room’s window and looked out over the lights of the city. 

“I thought it might be nice to spend an evening watching other people for once, rather than having them all watching us,” Peter said as he wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and pulled her back against him. He laid a hand on the soft curve of her abdomen and kissed down her neck. 

Ellen hummed, content to appreciate how he made her feel while she looked at the lights, and imagined people going about their lives in those other buildings, all completely anonymous to one another. She and Peter were just one of thousands, that night. She moved his hand between the hem of her knitted top and the waist of her dress pants, until his warm palm was nestled against her bare skin. Her eyes fell shut as she concentrated on the feeling of his heart beating into her back and the soft sounds of appreciation he made as he kissed her. 

“Ask me,” she whispered on a sigh as she leant her head back against his shoulder. He hadn’t, yet, but the whole night had clearly been planned with that intention. If he was nervous, he needn’t be. “Ask me, Peter.”

“Now?” he asked. 

“Yes, now,” she said. Her heart was beating so rapidly and firmly in her chest she felt like it was trying to escape. Her stomach was in knots. If he didn’t do it, she would, but Peter knew that this was it as well. Slowly, he let her go and she turned around to face him as his hands trailed down her arms to lightly clasp her hands. Ellen looked into his clear blue eyes and smiled when she saw him take a deep, shuddering breath. 

“Okay,” he said. “I know I’ve done this before,” he added as he blushed. “But I’ve never been so nervous.”

“Don’t be,” she told him softly. She licked her lips in anticipation as he looked down and knelt down, without letting go of her hands. Ellen’s own hands started shaking when he looked back up into her eyes with a determined, earnest expression on his face. She could not believe he was actually kneeling. She wondered what he thought about her hands trembling so badly all of a sudden, but his grip on her fingers tightened and he rubbed her knuckles with his thumbs to soothe the both of them. 

“Mac,” he began. “Ellen. I’ve loved you for nearly ten years, you’re my best friend, the one person I have always trusted, but I didn’t let myself fall in love with you until six months ago. I am so glad I did, because in my life I have never been happier than I’ve been the last few months with you. I am so proud of you, of us, of what we’re putting together here. You are the only family I’ve ever needed and always wanted. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to promise that I will never leave our home angry, I will hold you every day even if we’re fighting because I love you, and I will never take you or that love for granted. You are the most beautiful person, Elle, and I would be honoured to call you my partner, my wife. Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” Ellen said immediately on a choked whisper, as tears trickled down both her cheeks. She bit back a grin and nodded as he let go of one of her hands to reach into his pants’ pocket and retrieve the ring box. He let go of her other hand to open it, and revealed a thin yellow gold band, with a central, rectangular, light blue sapphire and three smaller diamonds of diminishing size on either side. 

“I liked this one,” he said. “Because it reminded me of your beautiful blue eyes.”

“And yours,” she said softly, because in the fact the stone was several shades of blue lighter than her eyes under the lights of their hotel room. 

“Our eyes, then,” Peter said with a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “May I?”

“Ahuh,” Ellen said on a bashful chuckle as she held her trembling left hand out. She didn’t know what to do with her right hand, so she clasped the hem of her top with it and focused on the look on Peter’s face as he carefully extracted the ring from the box and put the box back in the pocket of his pants. She hadn’t even noticed it in there over dinner or during their walk. Surely he hadn’t been carrying it around in the actual box in his pocket all this time either, it had to have been hidden in his luggage.

Peter held her finger steady as he threaded her fingertip through the gold band and slid the ring past her knuckle and towards the base of her finger. Her breathing was deep and heavy and the hand clutching at her shirt quickly lifted to wipe her face. Peter shut his eyes tightly and leant forward to kiss the hand he was now holding in both of his. 

“Peter,” she said after a moment’s silence between them. She gave a tug on his hand and helped to pull him to his feet. “Those three things you promised, I promise as well. To never leave our home angry, to hold you every day even if we’re fighting, and to never take you or how we feel for granted. I’ve never been happier either, I’ve never felt…I’ve never been in love before, I’ve never loved someone this much before…I still don’t quite know what to do about it, I still feel…really raw, emotionally raw, most of the time.”

“I know, it’s okay,” he whispered as she began to weep. “I’m here, that’s all you need to know. I’m always going to be right here.”

Ellen nodded and wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulders. They hugged tightly as the cool metal of her engagement ring warmed to the temperature of her hand. She sobbed a few times into his neck when she heard him sniffle, it was enough to break her, and she ran her fingers through his longer than usual, curly hair to try to comfort him as well as he was comforting her. 

“I love you,” she whispered as she lifted her head and kissed his cheek. She held her face against his and repeated the sentiment just as surely. “I love you.”

“You too,” he replied. He also pulled his head slightly back to look her in the eyes, and they grinned at each other. “Want a bath?” he asked. “I think we need to calm down, and I think I promised a backrub to ease those cramps?”

“Mm, yes please,” she said with a smile. She stroked his cheek affectionately. “You’re a good man, Peter Church. Thank you for not giving up on me over the years when I felt like I had no choice but to devote my whole self to the job, to running the unit, to looking after you all, and thank you for helping when you saw I was running on empty, thank you for your patience and your strength.”

“You’re just as strong, Mac,” he assured her. “The pair of us, we just need a rest.”

“We just had three months of rest.”

“We need more,” he said. “We need a lifetime together of lazy morning hugs and bickering over who’s going to do the ironing, stuff that’s far away from worrying about covers and targets and informants we can’t trust.”

“I wasted so much time,” Ellen admitted softly. “I am so sorry.”

“I got to see you and work with you every day for the last decade,” Peter reminded her. “That’s not wasted time, I wouldn’t change it for the world, but it’s changed us. You’ve earned a life that you most want now, we’ve earned this.”

“Yes,” she agreed softly, before leaning in for a kiss. She moaned as Peter squeezed her hand and kissed her. He took her bottom lip in both of his and gently suckled. She felt his eyelashes flutter delicately against her face as the back of his free hand brushed over her tender breast. “Bath, massage, sex,” she whispered as she pulled back to playfully kiss across his nose and cheeks. “Thank you for a special night, sweetheart. I don’t care if I get knocked on the head again, I’ll never forget this.”

“Me either, Elle,” Peter said. “Good plan, by the way. Bath, massage, sex. Let’s go!”

*

“Ah, fucking Danni!” Ellen exclaimed an hour and a half later when her phone rang, again. They had ignored it the first two times, but she just could not ignore it any longer. She leant her naked torso forward with Peter still inside her and reached for her phone which lay beside his on the bedside table. Peter helped to hold her up and groaned as he gently continued to thrust his hips. He lifted his head and closed his mouth around a pink nipple to suckle while Ellen answered the ringing phone. 

“Mac!” Danni exclaimed. “Are you okay? Fleur says you’re not back at the safe house yet, and I was just calling to check in but you didn’t pick up, and-”

“Sorry Danni,” Ellen said as she shut her eyes and concentrated on what Peter was doing with his mouth and two front teeth. It took all her energy to keep her voice level as she explained. “Peter and I are still out. I’m going to stay with him tonight, no safe house, no wires. Sorry but I’m actually not sorry, we’ll be careful, and I’ll see you in the morning-okay-bye.” She hung up and threw the phone onto the bed behind her before sitting up and driving her hips back against his. Both of them moaned loudly. 

“Holy fuck she’s going to know we were having sex,” he hissed as he tossed his head back against the pillow and reached for her hips and bum. 

“Do you care, love?” she asked, as Peter squeezed her bum and then pulled her upper thighs an inch further apart and down from behind, forcing himself deeper inside her. 

“Nope,” he said in a puff of breath as he quickened his thrusts and rubbed his furry pubic bone against hers. Ellen began a low moan as the power in her movements began to fail. She didn’t want to do anything except keep him inside her, and she was so close to climax, he was so deep, that she felt she could barely function. She loved this, she thought. She loved everything about this. She didn’t want to go back to the safe house. She didn’t want to go to work the next day. She just wanted to come, then.

“Peter,” she whispered as they rubbed and thrust. “Fuck, love. Oh love, oh fuck Pete.”

“Forever, love this,” he said. He held his eyes open to watch her as she climaxed, but the familiar, forceful contractions meant that he followed quickly, crying out with Ellen with absolutely no fear of being overheard. They knew they were almost free.


	16. Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

“Well-well!” Cameron exclaimed when Ellen arrived at Homicide the next morning, dressed in a grey and blue police-issue t-shirt and long black tights. “Look who finally made an appearance.”

“Ahah!” Danni exclaimed as she walked around the corner just in time to see that Ellen was in fact alive and well. “Here’s my senior police officer, my friend, who doesn’t mind flouting the rules. Did you have to hang up on me? I was worried!”

“Sorry,” Ellen said with a bit of a laugh as she blushed. “Uh…does this make up for it?” She held up her left hand to display the sapphire and diamond ring on her finger.

“Ooh!” Danni exclaimed as she hurried forward and grabbed at Ellen’s fingers. 

“Yeah, that’ll do it,” Cameron mumbled in her direction with a teasing smirk. “Well played, Mac. Smooth.”

“Thank you,” she quipped.

“It’s a Ceylon sapphire?” Danni asked. Ellen smiled and nodded. “It’s so light and pretty, and the diamonds all cut a slightly different way on each side is just a little bit quirky…I can see why Peter just had to buy this, it really suits you! But you’re going to take it off for the demo this morning, right? Or move it to another finger?”

“It will have to go onto my right hand,” she said. “I don’t have a chain to hide it and it’s probably not safe to be wearing it around my neck. I wouldn’t want Cam to accidentally yank on it when he takes me down.”

“I thought you were going to take him down?” Danni asked.

“He gets to go first. Shock tactics. Don’t worry, it’s all rehearsed, I won’t stuff up.”

“I wouldn’t even suggest it,” Danni assured her gently in light of Ellen’s somewhat defensive tone. “So where is your fiancé this morning?” she asked, as Ellen moved the ring from her left to right hand. 

“At the safe house. He’s going to bake a cake and take it around to Paula.”

“He bakes?” Cameron asked. “And it’s edible?”

“Where have you been?” Danni asked with a laugh. “Peter Church can cook!”

“He actually makes a really dense, yummy chocolate mudcake,” Ellen said. “He cooked it for us while we were in an apartment in Port Douglas, just off the top of his head! I told him he should slip some hash into it and really make Paula’s day!”

*

“Good morning everyone!” Cameron said as he stood in the school hall with a microphone held in his hand. He and Ellen were not on the stage this time, but on the ground level. All the chairs had been cleared and the students were sitting cross-legged on the floor around the central mats that had been laid out. Some were on the bleachers along one side of the hall as well. Cameron was dressed in neat tracksuit pants and in a t-shirt identical to Ellen’s, while she stood beside him and surveyed the crowd while taking a few deep breaths. 

“This is our last session with you,” Cameron continued. “As you can see we’ve been joined again today by my friend Ellen, and we are going to get you to do some more physical work today. We’re going to do some role plays and practice what we like to call a loud refusal. That’s because most of you would never have found yourself in a situation where you feel intimidated or unsafe, and hopefully most of you never do, but if we can give you a little bit of practice at that, if you can start to recognize the signs of how you’re feeling in certain situations, you increase your chances of being able to remove yourself from that situation safely. 

“Now, one thing we’re not going to do is stand up here and say that if you know this you’ll always be safe, or if Kiera had known this she wouldn’t have died. The key is not to get yourself into unsafe situations to begin with, that’s what we’ve spent the last two days talking about, but hey, sometimes it happens, sometimes you join the police and become a cop and it happens quite a bit. Ellen, do you want to go and stand on the mat over there and turn your back to us?”

“Sure,” she said. 

“Now, if Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie is over there not paying attention and I can surprise her,” Cameron continued. “How easily do you think I could knock her off her feet, training or no training?”

One of the students stuck her hand up and when called on, said, “Pretty fast, because she’s tall but you’re taller and probably stronger. Plus you’d have momentum. If it was the other way around, she could probably knock you over too, cos she’d be the one with the momentum.”

“All true, but we’re not going to demonstrate offensive behavior today, we’re here to talk defence. It wins footy games and is much more useful. Before we teach you some of those strategies, we wanted to give you a bit of a demonstration, to show just how quickly one person can put another person in a very vulnerable position. Ellen’s going to go first,” he said as he looked over and into her blue eyes. “Ready?” 

“Yes,” she said. She gestured for him to step onto the mat and turn around. Cameron put the microphone on the floor beside the mat and turned his back to her. There was no loud countdown, no whistle, it was meant to be a slow count to five but on the proviso that Ellen moved when she was ready. 

She took a deep breath. The students were completely silent as they watched Ellen staring into Cameron’s back from several metres away. She took a half-step back to push off, and ran towards him. She grabbed his right shoulder and spun him around to face her. She was holding onto his shirt. He turned as though surprised but quickly grabbed onto her arm that was holding onto him and stepped back with one leg. He swung his other leg back around as well and twisted away, he wrapped his right arm around the left side of her neck, leant forward and flipped her over his back and onto her own back on the mat. They were gentle but it was fast and the tumble remained forceful. Ellen’s body made a thwacking sound as it hit the mat and a number of students gasped or commented as Cameron dropped to his knees beside her.

“Now,” he said to the students as he looked up into their faces. “Depending on what was going on in a situation like this, that would be my chance to either attack this woman, or run away from her before she had the chance to mug me, and it happened in seconds.” He looked down at Ellen and smiled as he asked, “You okay?” 

“Yep,” she assured him with a brief smile. She pushed herself up as he stood and gave her a hand. 

“And we practise this over and over,” Cameron said. “Just as some of you might do in Judo or any sort of martial arts training. It’s not something that you should be doing outside of a professional training space. Now, Ellen-”

“Oh, I’m ready!” she insisted as she clapped her hands together and grinned. A number of students laughed as she resumed her spot on the mat and turned around. Cameron rolled his eyes and put his hands on his hips. He pretended to check his nails while he was waiting, which some students giggled at. “Come on!” Ellen called without turning around to see what was taking so long.

They executed the same maneuver. Cameron took her by surprise but she grabbed him, stepped back, swung her body around and down, and threw his heavier body over her torso and down to the mat with a loud cry of, ‘Ha!’ as he landed. She was puffing with her hands on her hips as he took a second to recover and some of the students clapped when she finally offered him a hand up and brought him to his feet. He playfully rubbed the back of his head for sympathy as he made his way back to pick up the microphone.

“And people say policewomen are too itty-bitty,” he mumbled to teenage laughter. “Ow!”

“Sorry,” she said with a grin, aware that he hadn’t hit his head that hard. “But honestly,” she said to the class. “Even police like us who’ve had years of training can be caught off guard, and the training doesn’t always help.”

“Thanks Ellen,” Cameron said. “And you’re right, if you find yourself in an unsafe situation it can be really difficult to extract yourself. It happens to the best of us.”

“Well it happened to me, so yeah,” she said pointedly. More laughter.

“Today we’re going to give you some tools of the non-flipping variety,” Cameron continued. “Bug your parents for Judo lessons at the PCYC if you’re keen on learning more, but what we’ll do today will hopefully give you the confidence to know that if you do find yourself in some of the more common unsafe situations young adults face, you know what you can say or do to try to get away safely. Now, how we’ll do this is I’ll introduce the scenario, I’ll get some volunteers up here to role play, and then we’re all going to get into groups and spend a few minutes replicating that. We’re going to start with a peer pressure scenario, it’s really common guys, and it’s about being offered drugs in a group. Later, we are going to work our way up to what you might say or do if you’re being followed on the street, or if someone is intimidating you one on one. You would be surprised at the number of young men and women who are followed down the street by a creep in a car or on foot, sussing them out, and often it’s never reported. What do you do, if that happens to you?

“Now…this isn’t meant to be scary, we’re not doing this to traumatize you, but to prepare you. Rather than just listening to a few students up here role playing, you get to practice using your own words; that’s key. However, we understand that there are probably some of you who’ve had experiences in your life and this might bring back memories, or you might not feel comfortable role playing this with certain peers. That is okay. If you are uncomfortable at any point you do not have to participate. Ellen?” He handed her the microphone.

“I’m going to step outside,” she said. “I’ll be back at the end for questions, but if you do not feel comfortable participating over the next hour you can come outside and sit with me, no questions asked, for as long as you like. Just stand up and walk out, and look after yourself first, before worrying what everyone else is going to think.”

“Ah, a life lesson, thanks Mac,” Cameron said, teasing gently as Ellen handed the microphone back and rolled her eyes. She gestured that she was just going to go now, and she left Cameron with the senior class. She picked up her bag on the way out, and took a seat at one of a half-dozen chairs that had been set up just outside the hall. She sat on the farthest one from the door and retrieved her mobile phone to play Sudoku.

No one joined her for the next twenty minutes, and she hadn’t really expected them to. All students now got the ‘say no to drugs’ talk multiple times over their years at school, and so they were used to it, it wasn’t new, and it wasn’t very intimidating given that a portion of the students inside the hall didn’t say ‘no’ to drugs at all.

Ellen could still hear what Cameron was saying whenever he used the microphone, but otherwise she heard just the rumble and chatter of a hundred students and teachers. She did hear him declare that they were going to move on. Suddenly they were talking about what to do if you were being followed home from a train station, or if you were in the backseat of a taxi and something didn’t feel right. Cameron was asking the students what they might do in those situations, and Ellen looked up when she heard footsteps. She smiled at the two girls who came and sat on the chairs beside her. They were followed a minute later by a boy. The three of them all kind of smiled and blushed and said hello to each other. 

“Can we talk out here?” one of the girls asked her. She was slender, with dark, curly hair and dark skin. She sat closest to Ellen.

“Sure,” Ellen said. “You can talk to each other or to me, about anything really.”

“Are you really the police officer on the news who got bashed the day Kiera died?”

“Yes,” Ellen said honestly. 

“And it was the same person?”

“We believe so, but we really don’t know at this stage.”

“Oh, that sucks.”

“It does a bit, yeah,” Ellen agreed with a bemused smile. 

“Do you have, like, a business card?” the other girl said as she leant over her friend and looked Ellen in the eyes. She had alert brown eyes and straight, dark blonde hair cut in a bob not dissimilar to Ellen’s. Her tanned skin was pale, her cheeks flushed. “I was one of Kiera’s friends, like you said on Monday.”

“Oh, um, well actually I don’t,” Ellen answered with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m not the sort of cop who usually goes to these things, or gives out my number, but I’ll tell you what-” She leant down and retrieved her wallet from her bag, from which she removed Danni’s card. “This is my friend and colleague’s business card,” she said as she handed it over. “She’s a Detective in Homicide investigating Kiera’s murder, and she would be happy to speak with you. She also knows how to get in touch with me.”

“Are you, like, in danger now?” the boy asked. “Because of what Kiera did?”

“Yes,” Ellen replied as she soaked up an impression of his face as well. Blue eyes, brown hair, dark skin which made his eyes stand out in a distinctive way. “But this isn’t about finding evidence of her wrongdoing so we can keep blaming her. We know she wasn’t really trying to have me killed, she didn’t do this on her own. We want to find out who’s responsible so we can stop it happening again to anyone else.”

“Danniella Mayo,” the blonde girl read on the card. “Is she nice?”

“I trained her myself, so I would say yes. She’s been a big help to me, at least.”

“Would I need…I mean…I’m under eighteen, so when the police spoke to me, my dad had to be there. Is there a way to talk to you without him? Just like we are now?”

“Yes,” Ellen said. “If you don’t want a parent, we can have a social worker there, male or female.”

“Oh really? No one told us that the first time, it was just a room full of men,” the dark-haired friend closest to Ellen said. She was obviously the moral support, Ellen had decided. She had been brought outside by her concerned blonde friend to sit between them and make it not look like it was the blonde who really wanted to talk.

“Cool,” she said. “Um, and she knows how to find you? This Detective on the card?”

“Yes,” Ellen said. “You call her if you need to talk, but make sure that number doesn’t fall into the hands of any pranksters, okay? I’m really sorry about Kiera.”

“Thanks,” the blonde said with a tiny smile. “Um, and don’t worry, Detective Mackenzie, I’ll be responsible with the card. I’m actually the School Vice-Captain so um, I should say, you know, thank you for coming to talk to us as well, about your experience and thanks for all your help. Everyone’s been really upset and we’re coming up to really important exams, I think this might help the students a little.”

“It’s my pleasure. What’s your name?” she asked the blonde. 

“Um, Jessica. This is my friend Darcy, and that’s Lyle.”

“I’m not so big on confrontation,” Lyle said to explain his presence.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Ellen said with a smile. “At this point in my life, me neither.”

*

“You got one?” Danni asked when Ellen and Cameron returned to Homicide to fill her in. Neil was sitting behind his desk, listening in as they all stood in his office.

“I got a possible,” Ellen said. “Did you ever talk to the school’s Vice-Captain, Jessica?”

“Last name?” Neil asked.

“She didn’t offer, I didn’t ask,” Ellen said. “I was trying to build trust with the teenager, not interrogate her. Sorry, I’m not very good at it.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Danni said with an easy-going laugh. “Jessica isn’t as common a name now as it was when we were growing up. Hang on, let me get Hayden.” She disappeared from the office and returned five seconds later with one of her partners, the tall, burly blonde man in a black suit who was always asking of Ellen wanted tea or coffee while she sat nearby. 

“Hi guys,” he said. “Where’s the fire?”

“Did you interview a girl from Kiera’s school called Jessica?” Neil asked. “Vice-Captain?”

“I dunno about whether or not she was V-C but we did speak to someone called Jess. Blonde hair, brown eyes, pretty short and a bit plump?”

“Hayden!” Danni said on a playful groan.

“What?” he asked. “I remember her cos of the way she looked me right in the eyes, fairly confident young lady, that’s all.”

“That’s her,” Ellen said. “She asked how to contact me privately. I gave her Danni’s card. She seemed to suggest that she was either feeling very guilty for not seeing this coming, or that she knew something that meant she was afraid to talk, which are the two scenarios I presented to the students on Monday in terms of how Kiera’s friends might be feeling about this. What did she say to you Hayden?”

“Nothing,” he said. “She said she was friends with Kiera but didn’t know why anyone would want to hurt her. None of the students told us anything, which is why you and Cameron have been out there this week trying a different tactic. Uh…lemme see…from memory, Jess is seventeen still, so her dad was sitting next to her while we interviewed her. Once she said she couldn’t help us, he pretty much shut us down. A lot of the parents did that. They’re all worried about their kids of course…which is why we had to sell this workshop thing to them as more instructive, self defence, peer pressure, the usual ho-hum, rather than a serious attempt on our part to get them to open up. I’m thrilled to hear it sounds like it worked on at least one. Jessica, eh?”

“Do you have a last name?” Neil asked.

“Yeah,” Hayden said. He pulled out his small notebook from his blazer and started flicking back through it. He had to go back several pages because he had interviewed Jessica in the days after Kiera’s death, while Ellen was still in hospital and before Danni even transferred across to Homicide. His notebook was filled with an additional three and a half months of casework. “Here we go,” he announced finally. He flicked a few more pages until he got to a list of students with brief notes on each. “Jessica Purcell, dad’s name Robert, Kiera’s friend, knows nothing.”

“Well she’s had a few months to think about it,” Danni said. 

“Her friend asked about not needing a parent present,” Ellen said. “We might want to get a social worker on standby just in case. A woman if possible.”

“Done,” Danni said. “Did she give you any indication of whether she is going to call as soon as possible, or whether she’ll sit on this for awhile?”

“She’ll probably give it a few days,” Ellen said. “She would have to wait until she could make a call without anyone around, or come here by herself…it might take some courage. My best guess…within the next few days, possibly on the weekend. I thought about going to the cops when I was a teenager for something happening at home, but I didn’t have a particular person I knew to call. My grand plan was to call in sick to my part-time job on the weekend, then pretend to leave for work anyway.”

“Good plan,” Hayden said. “I’d have to agree that’s likely for a seventeen year old who might not want parents to know what she’s up to. What happened? Did it work?”

“No,” Ellen said. “I think mum cottoned on because the night before, she suddenly insisted on driving me to work the next day…so I chickened out. Said nothing.”

“Well let’s hope Jessica doesn’t run into similar obstacles,” Danni said. “If she knows something serious and feels like she can’t talk, well, that’s why some kids top themselves. Thankfully none of them have, yet.”

“This is good though,” Neil said to Ellen and Cameron. “Well done, both of you. You can kick back now. Cameron, thanks for stepping in mate. Have a safe drive back.”


	17. Chapter 17

SEVENTEEN

Cameron honked his car’s horn a couple of times as he rolled the vehicle into a makeshift parking spot beside Angie’s car. He grinned when he saw the screen door open out of the corner of his eyes, and he waved at his wife as she stepped out onto the newly replaced verandah and leant over the nearest railing. 

“Hello stranger,” she said. “Good drive?”

“Yeah, went quickly,” he said as he got his bag out of the backseat and locked up the car. “How are you?”

“Pretty good, I haven’t thrown up yet today but it’s only one o’clock.”

“Terrific,” he said with a grin. He hurried up the stairs and leant down to hug her tightly. “I missed you Ange.”

“Yeah, we haven’t been apart since I moved up here a few months ago, I realised. It was pretty odd, just me and your mum. She’s inside making you a sandwich because ‘you must be hungry after your drive’. You are so spoilt, it’s really quite disgusting.”

“Ah, mums!” he said with a teasing grin as he touched her fair cheek affectionately. “Now, did Mac message you or call you like she promised?”

“Yes,” Angie said as she mirrored his grin and held up her own left hand. “She sent me a picture of her ring and a message that said, ‘Guess who’s getting married?’ So I guessed that she was in a pretty good mood and I sent back a picture of a gasping face emoticon and two thumbs up, and then I called her. Peter Church proposed!”

“He did,” Cameron said. “It was actually last week sometime, uh, must have been the same day that we were invited to head down there to help, but he only brought the ring out on Tuesday night. They snuck off together for the night without telling Danni where they were going, she was not impressed!”

“Why didn’t they tell us at the wedding?” Angie asked. “Mac just said they didn’t want to make a big deal about it, that it was our wedding day and it wasn’t their moment and blah-blah-blah-”

“I think that’s partly true,” Cameron said as she held the front door open for him to enter ahead of her. “I mean, I really didn’t get a chance to talk to Peter until last night when we all met at Danni’s place for dinner, but the way they think of it…it’s like they’ve been together for ten years already, it’s new but it isn’t, so I think they were just a bit like, ‘meh, not as important as Ange and Cam’s wedding’. But equally…they were keeping it quiet. They’re pretty freaked out about what might happen as an outcome of all this, not that Peter’s given me that impression…but Mac certainly has. She is freaking out.”

“Will she have to go into protection?”

“She’s assuming yes.”

“She told me that Peter had already found a celebrant and filed a notice of intention to marry, so the wedding is in a month. It’s basically as soon as possible.”

“Yep,” Cameron said as he nodded. He smiled as he dumped his bag in the living room and turned to greet his mother in the kitchen. Shirley had abandoned her sandwich making to come over and give him a warm hug and a peck on the cheek. “G’day mum,” he said. “How’ve you been?”

“Just wonderful,” she said. “We moved the stock into the Eastern paddocks yesterday and everything is under control. How was the city? How did your school talks go?”

“Oh, all right,” he said with a happy smile, as Angie sat down on a kitchen stool and watched him eagerly. “They were pretty hard-core talks really, the last one took the whole morning session cos the kids just had lots of ‘what if this happens’ questions. Mac ended up helping out Monday and Wednesday and that was great-”

“So she’s coping okay with the pressure?” Angie asked. “She sounded happy on the phone, but I wasn’t sure if that was genuine or if she was just using her brave voice.”

“A bit of both,” Cameron admitted. “But she’s coping just fine. She has good and bad moments as far as I can tell, but she did great at the school. The main thing I noticed was that she’s become very candid. Some of the things she says, I can hardly believe it’s the same person talking. I think I felt like I learnt more about Mac in the last few days than I did in the last eight years.”

“Well she was your boss, sweetheart,” Shirley said as she returned to finish the sandwiches. “I imagine that a policewoman of her standing has to portray a certain image, she can’t always be honest about how she’s feeling or what’s happening in her life with her staff…especially not if it might come across as a weakness.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Cameron acknowledged as he nodded. “And I get that, it’s not just a policewoman thing either mum, all cops are like that to some extent. She’s stepping back from all that, I reckon. Like I said, she’s freaked out about what might happen.”

“So the wedding will be quick, then,” Angie said. “They want it done?”

“They don’t want the cops to find any reason to split them up if she has to go into protective custody.”

“What would that mean?” Shirley asked warily.

“Um, it would mean new names, new jobs, they could have a police guard for some time, or just a liaison officer doing regular checks. It would mean moving into a crummy old house that wouldn’t really be their own, it would mean probably not having any contact with friends and family for a long time, maybe ever…and Mac has this new relationship with her biological mum and half-sister that she is trying to protect as well…”

“Best case scenario,” Angie added. “Is that it’s not necessary at all and Mac, and Peter I suppose, can move out of the safe house they’re in and buy a home and just go about their lives, either in the police force or not.”

“Is that best case likely, given that someone is trying to kill her?” Shirley asked.

“Um…probably not,” she admitted. “Cam?”

“Yeah, I don’t think they’ll get off completely free,” he said. “I can see it in Danni’s eyes. She’s not talking about it at all, but trust me, everything is in place to make sure that if something goes wrong, Mac is moved somewhere safe as quickly and quietly as possible. We might not even get told until it’s happened.”

“I had a good chat to her on the phone,” Angie said softly. “Told her I miss her.”

“She definitely misses us too,” Cameron assured her. “She misses the old life in the unit, running the unit, looking after us, talking to informants, going to meetings and being treated like someone who isn’t halfway off a ledge or down the plank.”

“They’re not talking down to her, are they?” Angie asked.

“A bit. No one means to, but you know, sometimes she doesn’t cope so well so…there are concerns. But from what I saw, she did bloody brilliant at the school and she knows this case backwards. She’s doing her best, just like old times. She played her part, and I actually think it paid off. I reckon we got at least one student thinking about coming forward with information, and now it’s just a waiting game.”

“Excellent, good job babe,” Angie said with a grin. “I’ll message Mac and let her know you got home safely, thank her for looking after you, she’ll appreciate that.”

*

“You’re home early,” Peter said from the kitchen when Danni returned to their safe house that afternoon. “Not catching any killers today?”

“No, I thought I’d give myself the afternoon off, effectively, by coming here to be Rebecca.”

“Nice,” Peter said as he chuckled as he sprinkled some spices into a saucepan. “I had forgotten how boring and-or relaxing it could be to be stuck in a safe house, depending on how you look at it. So far today I went for a walk, had tea and cake with Paula, and now I’m making tonight’s dinner…because that’s what you do in a safe house at two o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Oh, of course,” Danni said wisely as she nodded. “Need any help?”

“Nope. No need for it to get done any faster.”

“Fair enough, I’ll just go and lie on the couch then.” 

“Elle at work today?” he asked as Danni did just that. He asked the question to her feet as they dangled off the nearest end of the couch in the living room. 

“She sure is. She’s managed to find even more files that she wants to go through. She is also finishing up tracing the current locations of all those people she rejected from the unit over the years. I never knew there were that many who made it into the Covert Services merit pool and then to an interview stage with her…and Ellen only ever picked me out of that pool.”

“Is she going through the whole pool over the last eight years or so?” Peter asked.

“No, just the ones she interviewed, so everyone who met her basically. It’s still a lot.”

Her phone beeped and she wriggled around to retrieve it from the pocket of her pants. She remained lying down to read the message and announced, “Cam’s home safely”.

“Good,” Peter said simply. “It was good for Elle to have a buddy to hang with for a few days.”

“Hey, what am I?”

“Practically her boss right at the moment,” Peter said on a laugh. “Remember?”

“Oh yeah, I guess. That must be weird for her, actually. Talk about a role reversal.”

“Uh, yeah,” Peter said. “You’re only just figuring that out?”

“I’m a bit slow,” Danni said, teasing as Peter chuckled. “I’m new at this,” she added.

“We know mate,” he said. “And we’re all experienced enough to chip in and make it a team effort, it’s fine.”

“Sometimes I wonder how everyone else is going,” she said. “Everyone from Covert Services who was in other undercover units, all those operatives like you and me…I wonder where they are and how they’re doing since the restructure.”

“Well a lot of them are in the Special Response to Drug Crime Taskforce.”

“Mm. I think a lot retired too, though. Word is the Taskforce has had to recruit a lot of younger people to fill the long-term assignments that operatives like us didn’t want, because we all have families now or other things in our lives we want to accomplish.”

“I just think about Reg,” Peter said on a laugh. “He used to give Ellen a hard time when she was our boss and when he was one of the head honchos in Vice and Drug Squad…and there he was a few months back begging her to come over as an Inspector, and offering all of us jobs…and we all turned him down. Hilarious.”

“Would Mac have ever gone over? Would you?”

“A year ago I might’ve said yes,” Peter said. “But a lot can change in a year.”

“Shit, a lot can change in a few months. Look at all this.” She threw her arms up and out even though Peter could barely see her from the kitchen. “Dinner last night was so weird, just because it was so normal! We were just four adult friends having dinner. It was bizarre, because I don’t remember us ever really doing that away from work before. The last time we all got together was Mac’s birthday party, the night before she was assaulted, and even then it was at work, and our whole extended crew was there.”

“Yeah and other times we hung out over a pizza or something it was because we were working,” Peter said. “I dunno Danni, I think we’re just keen to make the most of the time we have left here with our mates.”

“I guess,” she said softly. Her phone beeped again and she sighed as she picked it up and read it, but she quickly sat up. “Oh hello,” she said to the screen. 

“What is it?” Peter asked. Danni held the phone out to him and he read it silently. 

‘Hello Detective Mayo, I’m one of Kiera R’s friends and I have your business card. I’d like to come in and talk to Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie or you tonight. Don’t want my dad there. Can I come to the police station in the city at 4.30pm today? I’m meant to be working it’s the only time I can come alone. Thanks.’

“Ellen’s a genius,” Danni said under her breath as she grinned. “Not only did she get this girl to talk – I’m sure this is the same girl even though she didn’t leave a name – but it’s Thursday night…this girl is pulling a swifty on her part time job just like Ellen predicted that she would.”

“Pulling a swifty?” Peter asked as he handed her phone back to her. 

“Yeah, you know, you call in sick to work or get a friend to cover your shift – she’s probably in retail since it’s late night shopping tonight – and you leave the house like you’re going to work anyway but really you’re heading off to do something else.”

“Well Ellen’s not a Detective for nothing; she can read people, even the kids she thinks don’t like her.”

“She said she thought about doing something like this when she was a kid herself.”

“Not surprising, given her less than charming adopted brother,” Peter said. “You better reply, this girl’s gonna be sweating bullets waiting for an answer.”

‘Hi there,’ Danni typed. ‘I will meet you at the front desk of police headquarters at 4.30pm and take you to see DSS Mackenzie. Just walk straight in through the front doors of the address on my card. Your dad doesn’t have to know. If you need any help or need me to come and get you just call.’

‘I’m okay, thank you, see you there,’ was the quick reply. 

“You reckon she has something important to say?” Peter asked. “I’m assuming it’s a girlfriend?”

“Yeah, well that’s who I think it is,” Danni said. “Ellen only handed out one of my cards yesterday, but we’ll have the mobile phone number traced…hopefully it’s not a prank and we don’t get stood up this arvo. I should probably go back to work.”

“This is good though, right?” Peter asked. “You think she’ll be able to help?”

“Relax, Church,” Danni said with a smile. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I bloody hate being in a safe house like this without knowing what’s going on, Danni.”

“I know, but maybe you won’t have to be for much longer. If our new informant knows something about Kiera, we might need to break cover to talk to Paula Rudonikis openly about it all anyway. That would be our ticket out of here, and you can go home to your fiancée. Equally, this girl might just need to talk about her friend, so we just have to be sensitive to that.”

“You better head back,” he said. “Make sure Ellen knows what’s going on and has time to prepare.”

“Yeah, I will. I’m going to have a shower first though, just because I can.” 

*

Danni checked her watch as she stood with Ellen outside the witness room that they had taken over for the purposes of the interview. It was less intimidating than one of the cold interrogation rooms with one way glass. It was twenty-four minutes past four. 

“I should go down,” Danni said. “In case she’s early.”

“Let’s hope she shows,” Ellen said. “Oh and she might be with a friend, a girl called Darcy. You sure you want me to wait up here?”

“Yeah, I don’t want you loitering in the foyer in case this is a set-up and there’s a drive-by planned or anything equally ridiculous. The number came back to Jessica, I’m sure it’s all legit, I just don’t want to take any risks.”

“That’s fine, you go. The social worker is on her way too, she shouldn’t be long.”

“So this girl is fairly short, yeah?” Danni asked. 

“Yes. Blonde hair about my length, similar colour to yours, brown eyes. She looks seventeen, you know? Trust me, you’ll spot her amongst the uniforms and security guards.”

“This is true.” Danni laughed and added, “I don’t know why I’m so nervous all of a sudden.”

“You shouldn’t be nervous, you should be pleased,” Ellen said. “One of your key investigative plans might just be about to pay off bigtime. Enjoy the moment.”

“Thanks, you too,” Danni said. “You got through to this girl, by the sounds of it. She wants to talk to you.”

“Well go and get her then,” Ellen said with a broad, wise grin as Danni hesitated. 

“Right, right, off I go,” she said. Ellen laughed and waved her off, and reminded herself of how new Danni was to this kind of responsibility. She thought about what Neil had said the previous week, that Danni was feeling the pressure too, and what Peter had said to her, that this transition hadn’t been easy for any of them. Danni was nervous because she was still trying to prove herself, and she didn’t want her plan to backfire, or anything to go wrong. Ellen didn’t think that it would.


	18. Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

Jessica looked scared as she was led into the witness room, but she sighed with relief when she saw and recognised Ellen. Ellen stood from her seat and smiled as she stuck her hand out for Jessica to shake. 

“Hi Jess,” she said. “Thanks for coming in.”

“That’s okay,” Jessica said. She was dressed in a black skirt and a newsageny uniform shirt, her bobbed hair was pulled back in a ponytail that was falling apart, and she was clutching a large backpack. “I brought you something.”

“Don’t worry, it cleared security,” Danni said with a chuckle as she gestured for Jessica to take a seat at the table. Danni sat down beside Ellen and poured them all a glass of water from the jug that Ellen had brought in. 

There was a knock on the door and it was opened by an older woman with a kind smile, who introduced herself to Jessica as Jasmine Reynolds, the social worker. She would sit in the corner and listen and would make sure that Jessica was not put in an unethical or uncomfortable position. Jessica listened as she explained her role and then agreed, and Jasmine took her seat away from the table. 

“So Jess,” Danni said. “We’re going to record this, but it’s not an interrogation, we just want you to tell us why you’re here today and what it is you have for Detective Mackenzie that might help us. No one else will hear this tape unless it’s necessary, no one else is listening, there’s no one-way glass in this room and no microphones; it’s just the four of us. Anytime you want a break, just let us know. We can stop the tape and take a recess. Help yourself to water here, and you can stop the discussion completely at any time, okay?”

“Okay, thanks,” Jessica said with a small smile as she blushed and took a sip of the water from the nearest glass. Her bag had remained on her lap and she held it tightly with her other hand. 

Danni rattled through the formalities of the tape, which identified them all by name. She would likely be guarding this tape with her life, she decided. 

“Okay Jessica,” Ellen said once they were ready to begin. “Thanks for coming in again. I take it you’re meant to be at work?”

“Oh yeah um, the shirt. On Thursdays I usually leave for work before my dad gets home from his own job, so it’s easy for me to, like, say I can’t come in and then to be somewhere else like here…I just have to make sure I get home at the proper time. I don’t do it often, you know, but sometimes there’s something important…that’s all.”

“That’s fine,” Ellen said with a gentle smile. “Why are you here today?”

“Um…well obviously you came to my school this week and you told us more about Kiera and why she was killed. Everyone thought she was killed by a drug dealer, because it was sort of common knowledge that she bought marijuana for her mum. Now everyone knows it was probably something more serious that got her killed, right?”

“Right,” Ellen said. “Did you already know that, Jess?”

“Yeah,” Jessica said as her brown eyes filled with tears. “Kind of. I’m just not sure whether I should say, because what you said on Monday, about knowing something serious and being pretty scared…I kind of am. Are you really the policewoman who was attacked?”

“Yes,” Ellen said. Danni excused herself and returned a minute later with a folder that she handed to Jessica. 

“Proof,” Danni said. “I warn you it’s fairly graphic.”

Jessica opened the folder and saw photographs of Ellen’s injuries taken when she was still unconscious or had her eyes closed. In the photographs of the bruising on her back it was obvious that she was wearing a spinal collar around her neck, and Jessica let out a deep breath as she looked at Ellen’s face and the photographs of the bruising and swelling around her neck, once that collar had been removed. 

“These are all dated the day Kiera died, or two days after,” Jessica noted.

“Yes, I was in hospital for several days,” Ellen said. “You can trust me, Jessica. I didn’t do this to myself.”

“It’s just that I think a police officer might be involved,” Jessica whispered hurriedly as she looked into Ellen’s certain blue eyes. “I didn’t want to tell the detectives who talked to me a few months ago, it had just happened, and I didn’t know who I could trust. Like, if I walked into a police station, how did I know I wasn’t going to end up talking to the same person who made Kiera do the awful thing she did?”

“What awful thing is that?” Danni asked. 

“Putting the video on the Internet,” Jessica said. She sighed and unzipped her backpack, before retrieving her laptop. She slid it onto the table between them. “Kiera’s Internet connection at her home is really bad, it’s slow…she kept a laptop at my house and would come over some afternoons and on weekends to do research for her assignments, because the broadband at our house is much faster even though we’re just a couple of streets apart.”

“This is Kiera’s laptop?” Danni asked. “We took a laptop from Kiera’s bedroom-”

“Yeah, she had two. This is my old one, I gave it to her a year ago because her other one was really, really old. Like, it wouldn’t even run the new versions of programs that we need for school projects and she was starting to get in trouble for being so behind, because she couldn’t put the right amount of research into her work, it just took forever. So I gave her this one and she kept it at my house and we did assignments together, I helped her…I’ve kept it hidden, but I think you should look.”

“What’s on it?” Ellen asked as she opened the lid of the laptop and turned it on. 

“You,” Jessica said on a whisper as a tear trickled out of one eye and onto a flushed cheek. She wiped it away quickly. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Danni said as she handed Jessica a clean handkerchief. She was glad she had remembered to steal one from Peter’s luggage on her way out of the safe house that afternoon. “Have you seen Detective Mackenzie before, Jessica?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jessica said. “I’ve seen the video. I didn’t know that was the policewoman who was bashed the same day, I never made the connection between Kiera getting killed and that also happening, because there was that man going around trying to rape women in parks, and I just thought, well, the police had been trying to catch him.”

“We had been,” Danni said. “That’s exactly what we were doing that night.”

“But he didn’t do it to you?” Jessica asked Ellen. “That man from the parks?”

“No, it wasn’t the same man,” Ellen said. “Someone else knew I was there and took their chance to hurt me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jessica said as more tears fell and she wiped them away with Peter’s handkerchief. “When you walked into the hall and I recognised you from the video right away and you said you were that same policewoman who was bashed, I realised how bad this was…I mean I knew it was bad already, I knew Kiera had done something bad, I just didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t know who to trust.”

“You’re very brave, coming in here and trusting us,” Ellen assured her. “It’s okay Jess, just take your time.” In front of Ellen, the computer had been turned on and was loading its starting programs. “Do you want to show us where we can find some of the important things we should see on this computer?”

“Yes,” Jessica said. She put her bag on the floor and stood to bring her chair closer to Ellen, while Danni remained on Ellen’s other side, watching on. “Here,” Jessica said as she opened the explorer function and started navigating through Kiera’s files. “Here,” she said again when she pulled up the video and it began to play. 

It was the same eerily silent video that had been uploaded to the chat rooms, showing Ellen loading groceries into her car and then waiting outside her house. It came complete with close-ups of her profile and her face, as well as full shots that partially exposed her private residential address and her car’s licence plate; both assets had been sold, but it still made Ellen’s stomach churn. Finally, they had some hope of working out where this tape had come from. 

“Did you know about this video before it was uploaded to the internet?” Danni asked.

“Yes,” Jessica said. “I asked her who the woman in the tape was, she told me what she knew of her, of Detective Mackenzie. I saw what Kiera typed, she told me, and I tried to tell her to go to the police or even maybe to try to contact you Detective, to warn you, but Kiera said she didn’t know how and it wasn’t safe because she was being watched. She was scared…so I was scared as well. I couldn’t stop her. Afterwards, after she died, I thought about going to the police myself too but…I didn’t know I would be safe if anyone found out that I had this. You won’t let anyone come after me too, right? Detective Mackenzie said that she could protect us if we came forward.”

“We will not let anyone hurt you,” Danni assured her calmly. “Why don’t we start at the beginning, Jess? Do you know who sent Kiera this video?”

“Only that Kiera used to talk about ‘she’ and ‘her’ so I think it was a woman, and she was a police officer. I never knew a name. Maybe it’s on the computer somewhere, you know, like really smart IT people could find it. You have those, right?”

“Yes,” Danni said. “And I promise they will look at this computer thoroughly, and privately.”

“Good, um…cos I haven’t really explored it, I thought it best I didn’t know it, I don’t know if there’s stuff on there about other police too, who this person wanted dead.”

“Did you know that’s what they wanted?”

“Yes, Kiera showed me what she was going to type,” Jessica repeated. “She said that this woman had told her which chatrooms to use and how to find them and she said that she was going to state the woman’s name and what she looked like, and say that she was, um, an undercover police officer, and if anyone wanted information on her they should contact her privately and Kiera would give them that information.”

“Do you know what that extra information was?” Ellen asked. 

“No, I mean I thought it was probably information on how to find you. Your address, or where you worked undercover…are you really undercover?”

“I was,” Ellen said. “I’m not anymore. I’m in a form of police protection.”

“Oh,” Jessica said softly as her face fell and she bit her bottom lip. “Um, sorry.”

“It’s okay Jess, keep going.”

“Well I asked Kiera what other information she had, and she just said, ‘I know all about her’, meaning you, Detective Mackenzie. I asked her how she knew you, but she wouldn’t say, she just said, ‘I just do’. I guess the woman she was talking to, who was making her do this, she had given Kiera all the information. Like you said, Detective Mackenzie, she wanted Kiera to take all the blame when you were killed.”

“You can call me Ellen, Jess,” Ellen said with a smile. 

“Okay, thanks. I uh, I still don’t call adults by their first names so much. It’s weird.”

“Do you know how this person was forcing Kiera to do this? Or why?” Danni asked.

“Yeah, she was threatening her. She knew…about the drugs.”

“The cannabis that Kiera used to buy for her mum?”

“Yes. Kiera told me that she knew about the drugs and was threatening to put her in jail if she didn’t do her this favour. I told her that’s ridiculous, and that she should go to another police officer to report it, but Kiera really did think that she would be arrested for the drugs, because it’s illegal, what she was doing, buying them, right?”

“Yes it’s illegal,” Danni said gently. “But we might not have charged her, given the circumstances, or if we did, she would not have gone to jail.”

“She wasn’t even eighteen, I told her they don’t put people under eighteen in jail but Kiera said she couldn’t risk leaving her mum on her own, and she seemed afraid, like maybe if she left her mum on her own, her mum would be hurt. I don’t know what this woman was saying to her, not exactly, just what Kiera told me. But um…I think they communicated online a bit, as well as in person, so it might be on the computer.”

“Where did they meet?” Ellen asked. 

“In the park,” Jessica said as her voice cracked and fresh tears filled her eyes. “In the park where she was killed.”

“Do you know if she was planning to meet with someone the morning she was killed?”

“I think so. The night before, I asked her, ‘has anyone contacted you yet’, you know? And she said no, but that she had a meeting in the morning. I don’t know if it was with this woman, or if it was with someone who had seen the video and who wanted to find out more about Ellen.” She wiped her face again as she wept. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay sweetheart,” Ellen said gently. Tears had filled her own eyes. “I know you’re scared, you’re doing fine.”

“I’m not like other kids who hate the police or anything, I respect what you do, I never wanted Kiera to do this but she really thought that she might be in a lot of trouble…and then she got killed, and it was just awful what happened to her, and I don’t want that to happen to me or you or anyone else.”

“It’s okay,” Ellen whispered. “What else did Kiera tell you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did her mum know?” Ellen asked, trying a more direct question. “Had she told her mum?”

“No,” Jessica said with wide eyes as she shook her head. “No, she didn’t want to scare her, and she didn’t want her mum to stop taking the cannabis because it’s really helped her with the epilepsy and she used to go to hospital all the time because she had lots of problems with the medication the doctors gave her, but she hardly had to go anymore, and she was doing really well, and Kiera was afraid that her mum would get scared and stop taking it and that she’d have to rely just on doctors again.”

“Are you sure it was a woman who was threatening Kiera?” Danni asked.

“Yes, pretty sure,” Jessica said. “Kiera always used feminine words to describe her.”

“Did she ever say what sort of police officer she was? A Constable, a Detective-”

“No, I’m not sure if she knew. She just said stuff like, ‘I can’t go to the police Jess, she’s a cop, don’t you understand? There could be lots of them involved, and I wouldn’t know who was good and who was bad’. She thought it was just this one thing she had to do…but I’ve seen lots of TV shows about cops and crime and stuff, and it’s never just one thing when someone is being blackmailed, right?”

“Hardly ever,” Danni agreed. “Was Kiera given any money for doing this?”

“No, just the promise that she wouldn’t be charged for buying the drugs and supplying them to her mum. That’s the word she used, and I think that’s a cop word, it’s like the actual crime right, to supply?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Danni said with a soft smile. “You think she heard that from the woman?”

“Yes,” Jessica said as she nodded. “And she sort of said, maybe she would get some money, like a cut of what people would pay for the information, and she could use it to help her mum, but I dunno if it was definite. If it was a lot of money then she might not have told me until after. She usually told me things after they happened, with the exception of posting that message on the chat rooms, because she wanted me to read it and make sure there were no spelling mistakes. Pretty silly, huh?”

“Not silly,” Ellen assured her. “So you read it beforehand?”

“Yes.”

“Did she say how much she was going to charge people for the information, if they contacted her?”

“I don’t think she knew, I’m not sure. She didn’t say, sorry. I think she was only being told as much as this woman wanted her to know, when she wanted her to know it, if that makes sense? I told Kiera this was really dangerous, like these were cops and…I mean I saw the video…you looked like a nice person, Ellen. When that car pulls up at the end you have a big smile on your face and I just…I knew this was something really bad that Kiera had gotten involved with. I just didn’t know how to help her get out of it, and I’m not even sure she wanted to get out of it, not really. I know that’s an awful thing to say since she got killed…but if there was going to be money…she really wanted her and her mum to have a better life. They’re kind of poor, it’s just the two of them…I guess she was tempted, and, and manipulated because of that, like what Senior Constable Pierce said on Monday as well, with all the online grooming stuff. That’s kind of what happened to Kiera…but you guessed that, right? That’s why you came to the school and talked about those specific topics, like online grooming and being followed and how to be safe?”

“Yes, we suspected that was what had happened,” Ellen said. “It’s very common Jess, it even happens to adults all the time. People use the Internet to hide and to threaten, but it sounds like Kiera actually knew this woman in person as well?”

“I think so. I don’t know how else she could have found out about the drugs, unless she had seen Kiera buying them, or had overheard a conversation, or if she found out from the person who Kiera buys drugs off.”

“Do you know who that was?” Danni asked. “Kiera’s supplier?”

“It was a man, someone Kiera’s dad knew before he died. All I know is that she called him Lachie. I don’t know anything else about him though.”

“His name was Lachlan Fraser,” Danni said. “We were investigating him for drug dealing.”

“Can you ask him if any police knew what he was doing for Kiera?” Jessica asked. “He might be able to tell you more if he’d also been kind of caught. Maybe he was being threatened to do something bad in exchange for being let of charges too?”

“He’s dead, Jess,” Danni said seriously. “He killed himself not long after Kiera died.”

“He…really?” Jessica asked as her cheeks went pale. Ellen reached across the table to clasp her hand in support. “He committed suicide?”

“Yes,” Danni said. “So I’m sorry to say we can’t ask him. We do think he knew something…but we couldn’t find any evidence amongst what he left behind. This computer, Kiera’s computer, will help us immeasurably. We cannot thank you enough for bringing it in.”

“Am I in danger now?” Jessica asked on a whimper. She squeezed Ellen’s hand tightly. “What if she knows I came here? What if she’s been watching me too? Because if she was watching Kiera, then she would have known that Kiera came to my house all the time, and she was at my house the night before she was killed, and now I’ve come here to see you. What do I do now?”

“Is it just you and your dad at home?” Danni asked. Jessica nodded. 

“Yeah, when we were little kids we used to joke about setting up my dad with her mum. Um, he works here in the city. He’s a tax lawyer. Kiera and I kind of come from different backgrounds, you know? Her and her mum always did it tough but they were really close, I always have loads of support from dad but he works really hard.”

“And where’s your mum, honey?”

“She left. She has another family in South Australia and I don’t see her anymore.”

“Okay. Well look, we would like to make sure you’re okay. We’ll take you home, check that your home is nice and secure-”

“We have an alarm on the doors.”

“Good, that’s really good. If you want, we’ll talk to your dad for you.”

“Yes please,” Jessica said quickly. “He’s going to be really mad that I let her do this.”

“It wasn’t your job to stop her,” Ellen said as she let go of the girl’s hand and sat back in her chair. “A woman,” she repeated. Jessica nodded. 

“That’s why I didn’t think that she was killed because of this right away, or I just wasn’t sure, because Kiera was a lot taller than me and I mean she looked pretty grown up and she was fit, and so I thought…I thought she was killed by a man.”

“It’s almost certain that she was, given her injuries,” Ellen said.

“What does that mean then?” Jessica asked. “Does that mean she wasn’t killed by this woman after all, but by someone who wanted the information, and like maybe Kiera didn’t have enough information on you to satisfy them, so they killed her? They still came after you though, so she had to have told them how to find you. I just don’t understand how it happened.”

“That’s our job to figure out,” Danni said. “Jess, you have no idea how much this has helped. We’re going to look after you, all right? Don’t be scared, you should be really, really proud of yourself in coming forward once you had the chance.”

“I figured Ellen would be safe to give this information to, since she was the person that this other policewoman was trying to endanger, and when I realised on Monday that this woman’s plan probably worked, and maybe she’d try again since you actually survived…I had to come. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“We don’t want that either Jess,” Danni assured her. “Is there anything else you need to tell us that we haven’t asked about? Anything else that might be important?”

“Um…just that Kiera also had a phone that she used to arrange the pot. And I think she also used it to arrange meetings with this woman, like that was the number that Kiera gave her…I don’t know if you found it already or if it was any help. I don’t have it, but I know it exists. It was in a fake name…she said Lachie gave it to her.”

“We didn’t find it,” Danni said. “We think it was taken by the person who killed her.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jessica repeated. “I’m really sorry Ellen. I should have stopped her. I really thought you looked like a nice person on the tape and I didn’t understand why this was happening. Then when you started talking on Monday I could tell that you were a really good police officer too, and I nearly died when you walked out and I recognised you as the woman from the tape. I am so sorry you got hurt so bad, I am so, so, so sorry I didn’t try harder. I told Darcy I had to talk to you, but she doesn’t know anything. I didn’t tell her any of this, she didn’t know Kiera as well as me.”

“It’s okay sweetheart,” Ellen said gently as she smiled. “Thank you so much for your concern. You couldn’t have changed any of this, all right? It’s not your fault.”

“I just don’t want to be hurt,” she said as she began to weep. “Can you call my dad?”

“Yeah, we’ll call him,” Danni said. She smiled sadly as Jessica collapsed her face into Peter’s handkerchief and cried, and Ellen stood and leant over beside her to pull her into a hug. Jessica wrapped her arms around Ellen’s waist and sobbed into her tummy, as Ellen stroked her hair and hushed her gently. She was just a girl, really.


	19. Chapter 19

NINETEEN

“A woman,” Peter repeated as he sat beside Ellen on her safe house’s couch that night, as Danni sat on the coffee table facing them with her hands on her knees. She nodded. “A female police officer.”

“Yes,” Danni said. “Jessica insists that was the impression Kiera gave her.”

“Where’s the computer now?” he asked as he held Ellen’s hand. 

“With IT, and trust me, they are going to tear this thing apart. Whatever is on that computer, in addition to the footage, it will be found. I’m hoping for emails, or some kind of saved chatroom conversation. According to Jessica, Kiera was told exactly what chatrooms to use. Whoever organised this was pulling all the strings.”

“So we’re still back to this idea that the perp could have been two people,” Peter said. “He could be someone who saw this ad and genuinely wanted Ellen…but the point Elle made the other week remains valid; it doesn’t leave a lot of time for surprise and delight and indecision and planning; that entire process that a person would go through to get from Point A of seeing the ad, to Point B of attempted murder.”

“Yes. Or, we have an attacker working with or hired specifically by this woman. Whoever this is, she doesn’t like to get her hands dirty.”

“Maybe she has nice nails,” Ellen said with a droll smirk, though it was a valid point in terms of trying to profile this person. She didn’t know any policewomen who got manicures, though.

“How many policewomen are in your reject pile, Elle?” Peter asked her. 

“Hardly any. I interviewed five women besides Danni in the last eight years,” she said. “In fact, I did not interview any women after I hired Danni five years ago, so really I interviewed six women in the three years when I was second-in-charge to Bernie Rocca. They all presented as competent, but two of them were too young, I felt. One was too similar to Angie, one was married and realised this kind of job probably wasn’t a good fit, and two I felt didn’t have the right personality anyway.”

“When did you interview them?” Danni asked.

“Uh…most I interviewed around the same time I interviewed you, when we knew Bernie was leaving and I was probably going to succeed him and we needed another operative. I was keen to hire a woman at that stage, because I was effectively stepping back from operational duties and that left only Angie. The other one or two women I interviewed two years earlier, after Christina Rossi was shot and killed and Peter took some time off…we weren’t sure if he was going to be back, and Bernie asked me to speak to some people. Obviously at that point I interviewed mostly men who could fulfil Peter’s role in the team. They’re the two times I did the bulk of interviewing. Most of the time our unit functioned so well I never had to think about it.”

“So this narrows the list considerably,” Peter said. “Are we sure this woman was a real cop?”

“She convinced Kiera,” Danni said. “Whoever’s behind this knew Ellen well enough, or was about to get the information on Ellen that they needed…I’d say either a genuine cop, or someone very close to a genuine cop.”

“We still don’t have a motive,” Ellen said. “None of the handful of women I rejected on interviews stood out to me, most of them are now married with kids and they’ve either moved on or they’re working out in suburban stations as Senior Constables or Sergeants; I’m sure they don’t give me a second thought, they probably don’t even remember me…five to seven years has passed for all of them in their lives, too.”

“How many female cops have you pissed off over the years?” Danni asked. 

“I don’t know!” Ellen said on a laugh. “I don’t keep a tally! And actually, mostly I’ve always worked with men. All my dealings as the head of our undercover unit with members over in HQ, they were all men. Bill Hollister, Bryan Gray, Reg Masters, Neil, for goodness sakes…there were no other women in our meetings, there were no other women managing undercover units. I was the highest ranked female officer in the entire Covert Services branch. I don’t remember stepping on any particular woman’s toes on the way up either, because there were no toes to be stepped on. All men. And I pissed of plenty of men.”

“What about…” Danni winced as she trailed off, took a deep breath, and asked, “Any women who have shown a more than professional interest?”

“What?” Ellen asked plainly.

“Has any woman ever come on to you, Mac?” 

“Oh!” she said as she blushed. “Uh…I don’t know. Not that I remember?”

“No drinks invitations that you got a definite vibe from?”

“No. But I mean, maybe? I don’t remember. No woman has ever been, uh, persistent…and again, for at least the last decade I’ve been pretty distracted and definitely unattainable in terms of any kind of relationship. Just ask Peter.”

Danni chuckled as Peter rolled his eyes and clasped her hand more tightly.

“For what it’s worth, when we were together I don’t remember you ever mentioning something like that, not even as a fun kind of anecdote we could chuckle over.”

“Okay, well I just thought I’d ask,” Danni said. “I’ve had a few women ask me out over the years…we haven’t talked about the scorned lover theory yet but it is a possibility we should address.”

“Well I’ve definitely never had a female lover,” Ellen said. “I would remember that!”

“As would I,” Peter said with a thoughtful, wistful look on his face as Ellen laughed.

“The good news is that this does narrow our focus,” Danni said. “If we can find something incriminating on this laptop, something identifiable…we could be almost there.”

“Is the girl protected?” Peter asked. “Is she safe?”

“Yes, we brought her father in and he is now up to date. There’s a guard on the house tonight and dad is sending her to her aunt’s house in Tasmania. She wanted to stay but he’s pretty freaked out and doesn’t think it’s safe for her here right now. She’s going to go to a school down there for a few weeks and hopefully will stay on track for her senior exams. It’s not a great situation to be in at the end of Year Twelve. She might even just stay down there to do her exams, we’ll see. I’ve promised to keep in touch.”

“Hopefully she can relax now,” Ellen said. “It would have been very stressful, these last few months, having that laptop hidden in her bedroom, terrified someone was going to come along and find it or go after her as well. I know what it’s like to have a secret like that, to know something about someone you’re close to, but to not know what to do with that knowledge to help them…Better that she’s interstate and safe with family now that we, the adults, have that special information to work with.”

“We are going to work with it, too. We’ll start getting answers on the laptop contents sometime tomorrow,” Danni said. “In the meantime, Peter, how do you feel about breaking your cover with Paula to ask her about this? Or should I send in Hayden?”

“Ultimately I’d like to get the hell out of that safe house,” he said. “One is enough. I don’t have a problem with us breaking cover. It might even shock her into talking.”

“Remind me,” Ellen said vaguely. “Was Lachlan arrested or questioned while the two of you were working to build that case with him, just before the restructure?”

“No, he never mentioned any cops to us,” Danni said as Peter shook his head. “He was a fairly chatty guy, pretty nervy…he would have mentioned if cops had been hanging around, or we would have seen him taking extra precautions. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a cop, of course, just hiding out in the background promising to keep him out of trouble in return for the odd favour.”

“I’m just trying to think of ways that this woman could have actually first come into contact with Kiera,” Ellen continued. “Did she randomly approach her on the street? Did she watch her for a few days first? How, why did she pick Kiera? She would have to be believable as a cop, and she would be if she was a real one, especially if she was in uniform. But what came first? Did she find Kiera and learn about Kiera’s mother and the cannabis first, or did she find Lachlan first and he led her to Kiera? Did she happen upon Lachlan and Kiera doing a deal, or was Lachlan as candid with her about his clients as he was with you…he could have told this woman all about Kiera.”

“Would he really do that though?” Peter asked. “I got the impression he was a family friend, he was doing this girl and her mum a favour. Would he turn her in to help clear his own debt with this person?”

“He did kill himself,” Danni said. “Maybe that’s exactly what happened. But that would mean that this woman used Lachlan to get to Kiera to use Kiera to get to Ellen. Now, for God’s sake, if you know where Mac lives, if you know where she shops, just walk up to her and shoot her on the street, right?”

“Well I’m kind of glad she didn’t do that, obviously,” Ellen said with a bemused frown, as Danni chuckled. 

“You know what I mean. It’s convoluted. It’s almost playful. This woman might be having fun.”

“Here’s a question,” Peter said. “And it follows on from what Elle was asking just before, about what came first. Did she know that we were investigating Lachlan? Or is that actually a coincidence? Is it a coincidence that we were investigating the same man who supplied Kiera with cannabis for her mother, and that our mystery policewoman used one or maybe both of them in a chain designed to expose Elle?”

“It sounds too perfect to be a coincidence,” Danni said. “But shit, Pete, how many people knew we were investigating Lachlan?” 

They both looked to Ellen for an answer.

“Not even everyone we worked with,” she said. “Some of the admin staff, some of the tech contractors, all four operatives, of course…but Lachlan was Peter’s informant first. This wasn’t a job that was given to us by Drug Squad or anyone else, it originated inside our own unit, because Peter came to me and said, ‘I’ve got this guy called Lachlan, I think he might lead us to bigger and better fish to fry’, and I said, ‘Run with it’, which is what I generally always said to Peter because he’s a pro.”

“Was a pro,” Peter corrected with a smile. “And yeah, that’s true. If that’s not a coincidence, then someone we worked with inside that factory is involved.”

“I can’t even process that,” Danni said as she leant forward and sighed, looking into both their eyes. “Okay, um…but Mac, you went through those files?”

“I can’t think of anyone, Danni. Granted, the last few years I’ve been so busy locked away in my office trying to distance myself from you all and to keep us afloat that I wouldn’t have noticed if anyone was having a good old grumble about me in the locker rooms. You all would have been in a much better position to hear it.”

“I never heard anyone say they wished you were dead,” Danni said simply. “You were a good boss. Fair, kind to the non-operational staff, I don’t remember you tearing anyone to shreds in the last five years…well except maybe Church here on the odd occasion he decided the rule book didn’t apply to him ‘because he’s a pro’.”

Ellen laughed loudly as Peter frowned and pretended to be put-out. 

“Hey!” he said. “Let’s focus, all right? Ultimately, what did this person know? First, they knew where Ellen lived and was even able to follow her to a grocery store to film her without her knowledge. The only way to find out her address would be to follow her from the factory, which is a secure location that hardly anyone knew about, or to hack into computer records that are meant to be sealed. 

“Second, they knew where she was going to be on that rainy Thursday night when she was undercover, running in the park, with you and I in the surveillance van down the road, and Angie and Cam on a night off. We’d only been on that job for a week, and hardly anyone had actually seen Ellen there apart from a car thief and his mate, who we ruled out months ago. Besides them and us, no one watched Ellen running, and yet our attacker knew she would be there and he picked his moment extremely well. 

“And third…there’s a possibility that they knew that you and I were investigating Lachlan Fraser, and that they then got close to Lachlan, found out about Kiera, and decided a random girl was much easier to use, and probably a more confounding choice of accomplice, and so a plan was born. Or they found Kiera first, discovered the link back to Lachlan, thought that was hilarious, and went from there.”

“That is really unsettling,” Ellen said on a sigh. She sat back on the couch and closed her eyes. “This is a woman inside the factory, or a woman who was close to someone inside the factory. Someone I put my absolute trust in. I trusted them with your lives as well as my own. And what, they were sitting back, plotting my downfall?”

“That’s what I think we’re confirming here,” Peter said. “And there might not be a malicious reason…it might literally be for fun, like what Danni said.”

“They bashed a girl’s face in and twisted her neck until it broke. That’s for fun?”

“Well, no…I got no idea what went on there,” he said. “We’re just brainstorming, Elle, it’s okay.”

“This isn’t being recorded, is it?” she asked as she gestured above her head.

“No way,” Danni said. “I changed all the access codes on the monitors and not even Neil knows them. I gave Fleur and Novie the night off and shut down access to the room entirely. I’ll check in the morning if the door was opened and by who, but it’s so unlikely. We’re not being watched, we’re not being overheard. This is just us.”

Ellen sat forward over her lap and covered her face with her hands. Peter rubbed large circles across her back as he felt her taking long, deep breaths to steady what he was sure was a racing heart. Her head was bent low as she tried not to hyperventilate. 

“Is this safe house secure?” Peter asked Danni softly. “Do we need to move tonight?”

“I don’t know, to be honest,” Danni said. “We always suspected there was an insider involved because of where Ellen was assaulted, but we haven’t had confirmation until this afternoon. I’m willing to trust what Kiera told Jess…and given that Ellen’s always said the man who attacked her fought her like a cop working on an offensive drill, and he failed to kill her when he had the chance, we could be looking at two cops working together, who both know us all. That’s the worst case scenario-”

“No, the worst case scenario is if this cop or these cops aren’t caught, we can’t go into the system under protection…we could be traced.”

“Yeah, there’s that,” Danni said on a sigh. “Look, do the two of you want to stay at my place tonight? It’s secure, I’m the only one who will know where you are. I won’t even tell Neil. Ellen, are you okay hon? You don’t look or sound well.” 

“Yes, I’m fine,” Ellen said in a choked whisper as she wiped at her face and tried to sit up, but she ended up with her face covered and leaning forward again. Her heart was racing, she was sweating and having trouble breathing. Peter’s hand hadn’t left her back but the idea that she might have been betrayed from inside her own unit and that she might not even be safe in protection was too much to stem the panic. 

“We might take you up on that,” Peter said softly in Danni’s direction. “Elle, sweetheart do you need to lie down?”

‘Panic attack?’ Danni mouthed to Peter with concerned eyes. Peter grimaced and nodded. “Okay,” she said softly. “Lie her down on the couch, Pete, we’ll move you tonight while we’ve got the chance. I’ll start packing. You’re both coming with me.”

“I’m sorry,” Ellen whispered as Danni got up and left the room, headed for the bedroom and their belongings. Peter stood and helped Ellen to curl up on her side on the couch. He lifted her legs up and then crouched beside her. They had both had panic attacks before, and the best thing he could do for Ellen was just to sit with her. He stroked her hair away from her temple as she held onto his shirt and started to cry. 

“Shh,” he said as his stomach churned and his heart thudded painfully. He hated to see her like this, he hated the job for what it had done to her, he hated that he hadn’t noticed – none of them had noticed – until it was too late. “It’s okay,” Peter assured her gently. “You’re okay, we’re safe, we knew this was coming, this isn’t your fault.”

“We still don’t know who it is, we don’t know why. Peter we can’t leave yet.”

“We’re not leaving, we’re just going to Danni’s, that’s as far as we’re gonna make it. We’re not going to stop asking those questions until we get the answers, I promise.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she reached for his hand. “If it’s someone we worked with they could have gone after any of us, at any time, and I didn’t know. I have a duty of care to you all. This woman, or man, or little team, they could know where Oscar and Angie are right now, and Danni; they could know everything about us. I need to tell them, I need to make sure they’re okay. It might not be about me alone.” 

Peter kissed her hand tenderly and nodded. He knew that, he felt vulnerable too, but she had done nothing wrong and she knew that; she just needed to control the panic. 

“Just breathe,” he said. “Close your eyes, we’ve got lots of time.” Ellen nodded and did as he suggested, while he held her hand and continued to brush her thick hair off her clammy face. “I love you,” he whispered tenderly as he watched her slowly recovering. “You did well today, you’ve done well all week. Just rest a while.” 

She did not speak, but clasped his fingers tightly. That grip gradually relaxed. 

“You know what’s funny?” she asked after several minutes of quiet time. 

“What?” Peter whispered as he leant forward and lightly kissed her temple. Ellen opened her eyes and smiled at him, a beautiful smile that filled up her deep blue eyes and put colour back in her blotchy cheeks. 

“I’m actually really happy,” she said. “I felt good today, talking to that girl. I feel like I did something positive. But I don’t know what just happened, I couldn’t breathe.”

“It’s okay, we’ve both been there, done that. It was just a panic attack, one of those annoying little buggers…It was just a moment and it’s passing now. Happy, eh?”

“Yes,” she said on a whisper as she used her free hand to wipe at her cheeks. “I love you too. I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me. Help me stop it?”

“Of course. What do you think we’re all doing, huh?” he asked gently as he grinned. “Do you feel nauseous? Are you going to be sick?”

“No, I’m okay. I felt faint and lightheaded but it’s better lying down.”

“Good,” Peter said. “We’ll sit a few more minutes then. We are going to find out who is responsible, Elle. Hopefully there is some very useful information on that laptop, maybe even something we can use to identify a proper suspect, either this female mastermind or the man who killed Kiera and failed to kill you. I know you feel like they’re just sitting back right now, watching on, all evil, waiting for another great moment to have another go…but they didn’t know about Jessica and they didn’t know about this laptop, and we are now just that little bit out in front. We’ll make it count.”

“We do need to warn Cam and Angie.”

“We will,” Peter said. “Danni or I will call them once we’re safe at Danni’s, we’ll make sure that Angie and Shirley are always armed out on the property on their own. That’s all we can do until we know more. You have not breached your duty of care to us, Elle. It’s not your fault Kiera was killed, just like it’s not her friend’s fault either.”

“I know,” she said. “Rationally, I know. I just need to close my eyes and breathe for a few minutes more, and when we get to Danni’s I’ll need to sleep. Can we not talk about it for the rest of the night? Some nights I really hate talking about work.”

“Of course,” Peter said. “Some nights I bloody hate the job too. I’m going to go and make sure Danni packs your stuff properly, okay? I’ll be right down the hall. We’re not under surveillance but the doors are still armed, and we’re right down the hall.”

“I’m okay,” she assured him as she shut her eyes and tiredly rubbed at her face. “Go.”


	20. Chapter 20

TWENTY

“Is she asleep?” Danni asked softly an hour later as Peter returned to her sleek, modern living area from her spare room. 

“Getting there,” he said as he took a seat and reached for his cup of tea. “Sorry if that freaked you out-”

“No, no, I get it. Burnout, anxiety, paranoia, it’s fine.”

“She’s worse than me, obviously,” Peter said. “The panic attacks wipe her out, and if you told me that a year ago I would have laughed my ass off. It snuck up on her and me but she’ll be fine come morning…just a bit more emotional than she used to be.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain,” Danni insisted. 

“Yeah, it’s just…look…she’s really embarrassed that she’s not meeting the high standards she sets for herself, that upsets her even more, so just treat her like normal, okay? As much as you can? She doesn’t want you to lose your faith in her.”

“Peter, genuinely, stop talking,” Danni said on a gentle laugh. “I promise, I love you both, I consider Ellen a friend, and I’ve got her back. I am in awe of how long you both remained in Covert Services. I was only there five years and Ellen saw that it was time for me to move on before even I realised it. She put all of us first for too long, that’s all. I never even went after the real psychos like she did, because of her behavioural science background and because she’s just a damn fine actor…you don’t walk away from a unit like ours after more than a decade in it without scars.”

“Thanks,” he said softly. “Thanks for understanding.”

“So what do you want to do next?” Danni asked. “A late night call to Cam or Ange?”

“Cam,” Peter said. “He might even be at work tonight, right?”

“Oh, that’s right!” she said with a happier smile. “He did say he was going back to some late shifts, payback for ditching them for a few days.”

“What about Neil?” Peter asked. “How much do we tell your Inspector?”

“Well, I’ll see him before work tomorrow as usual. I have to braid Lottie’s hair.”

“Ha, of course,” Peter said, chuckling. 

“He knows I shut down the surveillance room before I left, and he knew that was as a result of meeting Jessica this afternoon. He saw Ellen and I bring in the father, we locked ourselves away with them both and had a long meeting…I didn’t get a chance to brief Neil entirely on what Jess revealed because he really had to get home to the kids, but he does know that there is a laptop down to be analysed and only he and I are to be given those findings.”

“You gonna tell him that we could have two rogue cops on our hands? At least one? And we’ll have to pour over our unit’s old staffing files again?”

“Yeah, I have to,” Danni said. “I trust him, and I trust the other guys I work with, Hayden and Barry and the like. I will not tell him where you are, though. He could probably guess, but then again I have a terrific poker face. No one will know where you both are. You can turn up at work like normal – or not at all – and just take precautions coming and going. I will as well.”

“Sounds good. I might take the day off with Elle tomorrow, go to the movies or look for a wedding dress or something like that, just to keep her mind off things. It’s been a big week for her, psyching herself up for the school visits and having Cam here, not to mention this stuff with Jessica…and if that laptop report comes in, it’s better for her if we just expect you to tell us, rather than having her there sweating on a report that could contain a lot of personal information, or alternately could contain nothing very useful at all. That would be really disappointing.”

“I hope it’s somewhere in between,” Danni said. “But not even Jessica knew exactly what we’d find. Anyway, shall we call the man in blue? What’s the time?”

“After ten,” Peter said with a laugh. “Let’s do it, he’ll love that.”

Danni chuckled and retrieved her phone. She set Cameron’s number to dial and put the call on speakerphone, while Peter craned his neck over the back of the couch to ensure that the door to the spare bedroom was firmly shut. 

“G’day Danni,” Cameron said as he answered his phone on the third ring.

“Good evening,” Danni said. “You sound awake?”

“Unfortunately. I’m manning the station tonight, I just got here actually and I am all on my lonesome. We don’t even have anyone in the cells. What’s up?”

“I’m here with Pete, you’re on speaker.”

“G’day Church,” Cameron said. “Mac okay?”

“Yeah, fine mate,” Peter replied. “We had a bit of a break with the case we wanted to update you on. We reckon we got a female police officer involved in this, either inside the unit or close to someone inside the unit. We want you and Ange to take extra precautions in case this person doesn’t just have Mac’s personal info.”

“Is this from the schoolgirl?” 

“Yes,” Danni said. “Mac and I spoke to her today, she’s handed over a computer. She’s certain that Kiera was being manipulated by a policewoman who was threatening to do her for the cannabis unless she helped hand over Mac. We’re now going to sit down and try to identify a list of persons of interest…it’s a much shorter list than what we’ve been stuck with…Mac’s come into contact with far fewer policewomen in any meaningful way over the years.”

“Yeah, that’d be right,” Cameron said. “We had a really low turnover, and wasn’t Mac pretty much the only woman manager of any undercover units?”

“The first and only,” Peter confirmed. “We’re hoping the laptop leads to an IP address or a chat room handle, or even a name or nickname that will give us a real boost, but there’s still that matter niggling away at us, to do with where Mac was assaulted, out on that operation that hardly anyone knew about besides a handful of us and a handful of Sex Crimes’ and Homicide’s guys, all blokes.”

“Not to mention the guy who did try to kill her,” Danni said. “He either freaked out and thought he’d run out of time, or he’s inexperienced and he thought she was dead so he stuffed up in a big way, or he knows Mac and just couldn’t bring himself to go through with actually killing her face to face.”

“Ange and I have been thinking about that too,” Cameron said. “It’s pretty personal…I get that it was meant to look like Mac was taken down by the pervert in the park we were looking for at the time, but if you’re a hired gun, well, there’s less chance of being caught if you actually use a gun, from a distance. This is real weird.”

“Are you and Angie being safe?” Danni asked. “No problems out there?”

“No, nothing. Ange and mum are armed whenever they’re out in the paddocks, whether they’re alone or together, and we’ve got a weapon in the house if it’s needed as well…we’re all good here. So we’re definitely looking for a woman? I’ll tell Ange tomorrow and see if anyone comes to mind. No description yet?”

“No, could be anyone mate,” Peter said. “In all honesty, she might not even be a real cop, just someone close to one.”

“Okay, well I don’t think there’s much risk to us all the way out here, but thanks for keeping me posted. I really appreciate it. I take it Tech are going through the computer with a fine tooth comb?”

“Yes,” Danni said. “With magnifying glasses too. We’ll let you know of any developments, and also just to let you know…Mac and Pete have left the safe house, I’m instigating a move, but I can’t say where-”

“That’s fine,” Cameron said. “Are your mobile phones all still active? Ange might want to give Mac a call just to say hi, is that all right?”

“Of course,” Peter said. “Elle would love that. How’s Ange doing? Still pretty sick?”

“Yeah, but otherwise well. Mum’s been fussing over her while Angie insists that she’s perfectly capable of still helping out with the renos. It’s hilarious to listen to them both…hopefully she’s feeling better in a few weeks.”

“I’m sure she will be,” Danni said. “How exciting. Okay Cam, nighty-night.”

“Bye guys, be careful.”

*

“Danni!” Max exclaimed early the next morning as she let herself into Neil’s home and wandered playfully down the hallway, whistling. The young redhead had raced down the stairs and ran up to throw himself against her. Danni chuckled and leant over to give him a tight hug. He was in his school uniform, or most of it at least; one sock was missing and only three buttons of his shirt were done up.

“Good morning!” she said. “Did I interrupt you getting dressed?”

“Yes,” he said with a mischievous giggle. “I had a good dream last night. It had dragons in it!”

“Really?” Danni asked with wide eyes and an open mouth. “I never get to have dreams about dragons,” she told him. Well, not literally, she thought. She dreamed about all kinds of evil creatures some nights, but they generally took a human form. 

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Max said as he nodded wisely. “But-but-but, Danni, do you want to take us to school today? Please-please-please?”

“Where’s Celia?” Danni ask. The house did seem quieter. 

“She has the flu so she’s gone to stay with her mummy,” Max said. “Daddy’s going to take us, but he said he’s really busy still. I don’t think he wants to.”

“Of course I want to,” Neil said on a resigned chuckle as he appeared in the hallway with a tea towel in his hand. “Max, Danni came in her own car, I’ll take you both to school in mine and she’ll go to work ahead of me. Danni, you want a cuppa?”

“Love one thanks,” she said as she took Max’s hand, peeled him off her, and walked with him into the kitchen. Charlotte was patiently waiting while she ate her cereal and read a book. 

“Hi Danni,” she said with a brief glance and smile. 

“Hi sweetheart,” Danni said with a grin as she met the girl’s bright green eyes. “You didn’t dream about dragons last night too, did you?”

“Ha, no,” she replied with a scoff. 

“What would you like this morning?” Danni asked as she drew her fingers through Lottie’s long, thick brown hair.

“Just two ponytails I think,” she said. She looked over her shoulder and up into Danni’s face with a smile. “I thought you might like to come over and not have to spend ages doing my hair for once.”

“Oh, okay,” Danni said with a cautious smile as she glanced at Neil, who shrugged. So helpful. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll have a braid tomorrow probably,” Charlotte added. “Do you want to sit as daddy makes you a tea?”

“Okay,” Danni said as she sat down on one of the kitchen stools and smirked at Neil. “So Celia’s gone home? Is she all right?”

“Yeah her mum came and got her last night,” Neil said. “She thought she was getting sick the last few days but it hit her yesterday; fever, muscle aches, the lot. She decided to stay away for a few days to reduce the chance of the rest of us getting sick too.”

“Fair enough,” Danni said. “Got a backup plan?”

“Daddy is the backup plan,” Charlotte said wisely. She grinned and added, “He’s gonna take us to school and pick us up and help us with homework and make dinner!”

“Oh really?” Danni asked with a bemused smirk in Neil’s direction. “Well-well.”

“He was going to get grandma to look after us,” Charlotte continued. “That’s mummy’s mum, but she’s really old and doesn’t drive and lives far from school, and we’re too little for the bus by ourselves, right daddy?”

“Right,” he said as he handed Danni a cup of tea. “Are you sure you don’t want Danni to do your hair today sweetheart? She came all this way. If you knew you didn’t want a braid, you should have told me, and I would tell Danni that she can sleep in.”

“But daddy, Danni doesn’t come just to do my hair, right Danni?”

“Uh…of course not,” Danni said with a thoughtful frown. She wasn’t sure if there was a right or wrong answer to that question.

“It wouldn’t be nice to take her for granted like that,” Charlotte added, before turning to Danni to say, “I used that word right, right?”

“Yes, you did,” Danni said with a laugh. She reached out to rub Charlotte’s back affectionately. “Well done.”

“Excellent,” Charlotte said with a grin as she turned back to her father. “See dad?”

“Okay,” Neil replied. “You two ladies finish your breakfast and tea, while I go and see if Max has found his other sock.”

“He might need some help with his buttons too Neil,” Danni said. “I think they’re a little wonky.”

“Everything about that little boy is a little wonky,” Charlotte said with a wise nod. Danni chuckled into her tea as Neil laughed and called out for Max before disappearing down the hall. 

*

“Hang on,” Neil said an hour later as he arrived at Homicide and Danni ushered him into his office with her news. “Are you telling me for the second time in four months that Ellen and Peter are off in hiding, that where they are is need-to-know, and that myself, as the chief investigator and the Head of Homicide, doesn’t need to know?”

“That’s right,” Danni said. “I need to know, you don’t because you have me.”

“What about Fleur and Novie?”

“Back to normal jobs in the branch,” she said. “We should have the laptop report sometime today. I told them to call me urgently if they found anything particularly damaging…and so far I haven’t had a call but it’s only nine-thirty.”

“Was there a security breach at the safe house where Ellen was up until last night?”

“No,” Danni said. “The three of us just weren’t confident that they should stay.”

“You realise what those places cost us to operate, don’t you Danni?”

“Of course, but we now know that there is at least one police officer involved in this plot against Ellen, so there is a genuine ongoing security concern. But honestly, take off your coat and sit down Neil, you just walked in and I bombarded you, sorry.”

“Thanks,” Neil said on a sigh as he sat in his chair. “I thought the point of the safe house was for us to lure this person out into the open to have a go at Ellen, and now we’re, what, back to hiding her away? Will she be coming into the office?”

“Not today. How was school drop-off, by the way? The kids were excited.”

“Oh uh, yeah they were. I got caught up at the school with Lottie’s teacher, who says that she is doing fine…but in that school it’s unusual for a single working dad to be relying on a young nanny to help raise his kids, let alone as a Homicide Inspector. And of course Lottie’s proud of daddy’s job and has told everyone about how daddy helps solve murders…it’s a great conversation starter amongst eight year olds. Her teacher loves it – not – so she just wanted to make sure everything was going okay.”

“If she’s chirpy enough to be talking murder and her awesome dad then she’s fine,” Danni said with a laugh. “She could be a little detective in the making, if you please.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Neil said hurriedly as he shook his head, but he quickly blushed in the face of Danni’s pointedly raised eyebrows. “Oh, um, well, what I meant-”

“That it’s all right for women like me and Mac, but not your little girl?”

“Uh…yes, that is what I meant,” Neil said as he looked into her eyes. “But also not, because you and Ellen are very intelligent and, uh, kind, and uh, well as this week demonstrated with Ellen, actually, you’re very good role models for young girls…” 

Danni chuckled just so that he stopped digging himself a deeper hole. Honestly!

“Can I ask you a question?” Neil added quickly. “On what Lottie said this morning, do you just come to my house every morning to do her hair? Is that all it is?”

“Well no,” Danni said with an obvious smile. “I like your kids, I know Lottie goes through periods of missing her mum and you stood opposite me last week and gave me the ‘she’s growing up’ speech and asked me to come, so…it’s not like I can pretend I’m using her to practise my braiding technique anymore…I like you all.”

“You like us,” Neil repeated. Danni shrugged innocently and nodded. “How much?”

“Enough that I turn up at your house every morning to braid your daughter’s hair.”

“Mm, I suppose I deserved that roundabout answer.”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me Neil,” Danni said as her heart thudded in her chest. “So I’m just going to guess,” she continued. “Tell me I’m crossing a line if you like…but do you want to go to dinner one night? My only condition: no talk of work.”

“You’re asking me out?” he asked as his mouth dropped open. Danni raised her eyebrows and clasped her hands in front of her. 

“Are you…pretending to be surprised?” she asked. Because he really shouldn’t be.

“Oh uh, sorry, no, wait yes, wait I don’t know,” he said.

“Well that’s articulate. How you got to be the Head of Homicide I’ll never know.”

“I only talk like this around you, thank you very much,” he insisted with a chuckle. Danni blushed but was unable to hide her grin. “Um, dinner, yes I would like that. This weekend maybe? We can drop the kids off at their gran’s for a couple of hours.”

“If she’s able to cope with them, fine, but either way there’s no rush,” Danni said. “I just thought I’d ask since, well, I got the impression you might like that.”

“I really would,” Neil said softly but more directly as he looked into her eyes.

“Okay then, dinner. You let me know when you’ve got some time…and I’m really looking forward to it. But don’t think I’m telling you where Ellen and Peter are because I wouldn’t even disclose that information if I was being tortured for it.”

“I think enough has gone wrong in this case without pre-empting something like that,” Neil said with a wry, dark chuckle. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“A lot has gone right for us this week too,” Danni reminded him happily. “I might go down to IT and harass them. I want that laptop to sing, I want everything inside it.”

“Not so fast. First, I want to hear more about this police officer who’s involved.”

“Walk and whisper, mate.” Danni gestured for him to come with her. “I’ll brief you.”


	21. Chapter 21

TWENTY-ONE

“Thanks for coming in on a Friday afternoon,” Danni said as she met Ellen and Peter as they stepped off the elevators. She led them straight into Neil’s office. She smiled at the fact that they were holding hands and Ellen was wearing her engagement ring. Ellen did not look nervous; she had a resolute, switched-on expression on her face that Danni knew was a genuine reflection of strength and calmness. Ellen was feeling better, it seemed. Peter, on the other hand, did look slightly stressed. Danni wondered if they were ever both calm and collected at the same time. Surely, and she just never saw it because of where and why she always saw them. It wasn’t a normal friendship.

“Well that’s ominous,” Ellen quipped as she entered Neil’s office and was confronted by the laptop that Jessica had handed over. It was propped open beside a manila folder on Neil’s otherwise clean desk. Three chairs had been set around Neil’s desk and they were all quickly occupied, as Neil himself sat in his own chair and offered professional smiles. Danni had closed the office door, and the blinds were shut. 

“How’s your day been?” Neil asked. 

“Productive, actually,” Ellen said without giving away any more information. They had decided to keep busy, and had gone for a mid-morning walk around Danni’s suburb. They followed that with shopping for wedding clothes in the city and finally to a late lunch with Ellen’s mother Eve and sister Amy, via Eve’s boutique art gallery. 

Eve had been ecstatic to meet Peter for the first time, she had hugged him easily and made him feel part of the family, and given that Ellen had only really been a part of that family for a few years herself, it meant the world to her to hear it. Eve and Amy were excited about the engagement as well, and not surprised at all, apparently. Ellen was more transparent than she thought, they said. They’d had a lot of laughs that afternoon, and it made Ellen happy to spend time with them…but Neil Underwood did not need to know that. He didn’t even currently know where she was living!

“But we’re here now,” she added simply. “I take it you have the report on the laptop.”

“How bad is it?” Peter asked once Danni was also settled beside him. Ellen crossed her legs and arms and leant back in her chair, waiting for them to begin. 

“Well,” Danni began as Neil gestured for her to speak. “It does help to answer some questions.”

And that was it. She stopped talking. They sat in silence for several seconds.

“Are you going to make us guess?” Ellen asked with a wry, gently teasing smirk.

“On Kiera’s laptop we have discovered several files,” Danni continued on a deep breath. “Firstly, we have a number media files,” she added. “Twenty-two media files of varying length, culminating in the final one minute long clip released online.”

“You mean there are extended versions?” Peter asked.

“Kiera made no attempt to hide them,” Danni says. “Further highlighting that she was a novice at this game. However, we now also have confirmation that the person who filmed the footage of you, Ellen, was Kiera. Given the ‘date created’ information on the computer, she was filming you when she could for about a month before the video was released. She appears to have been able to follow you in her car from your home…to the shops, the gym, on foot in the city…and to work, to the factory.”

“Shit,” Ellen said under her breath as she looked skyward and let her eyes roll back in her head. Kiera might have been a novice, but what did that make Ellen? “I didn’t even notice.”

“There is another person in some of the footage,” Danni said as her eyes slid to Peter. “And that’s you, Peter.”

Peter nodded and pressed his lips together. Telling Ellen she had been followed ‘on foot in the city’ was clear Danni-code for ‘she saw you meet Peter for Friday morning breakfast in the city’; it was really the only time Ellen had set foot on an urban footpath in that month prior to Kiera’s murder. The restructure and her high stress levels had otherwise confined her to the factory or to her home. Peter was the only person to have known that at the time, and so he had made himself more present in her life. It was how their relationship became renewed; he would never regret that.

“Do you want to watch some of it?” Danni asked. 

“Yes,” Ellen said as she looked apologetically from Peter back to Danni. She took a deep breath and nodded firmly. “Yes, show us.”

Danni leant forward and took control of the laptop. She woke it up and navigated through the directory until she found the file she wanted to show them. Ellen quickly realised that Danni had a thorough knowledge of the file names and locations; she had already been through this laptop at least once since it was returned to Homicide with the report, and she had only called Ellen and Peter in once she was comfortable with the material that this key piece of evidence contained. 

Satisfied that she had the correct file, Danni adjusted the volume and turned the laptop towards Peter and Ellen on the desk. Neil stood from behind his desk and walked around to stand behind Danni so that he could also watch it. 

It had been filmed from inside Kiera’s car. The phone or video camera had been set up on the dash and was focused on Ellen’s house, as the car remained parked across and down the street. Ellen’s car was parked in the driveway as was normal. Her heart hammered in her chest as she watched the footage. 

“This girl is in her car,” Peter mumbled. “Wasn’t she on her Learner’s Permit?”

“Yes,” Danni said. “But she was aiding and abetting what was to be, at least, an attempted murder…so I think she made her peace with driving without a licence. She’s a pretty confident young driver though, had about ninety hours in the logbook.”

“Guess who we realised signed off on most of those hours with her?” Neil asked. Ellen and Peter both looked at him curiously before he answered, “Lachlan Fraser.”

“Family friend,” Peter said with a scoff as he shook his head. His smile was wary and sad. “I wonder if he told her how to set up a camera on the dash like that too? She might have confided in him, told him she was in trouble…he was trying to help.”

“Here I am,” Ellen said as she focused back on the video. Almost immediately, Kiera’s voice also became audible. 

She had narrated the whole thing, like a video diary.

‘Oh here she is,’ Kiera said in a hissed, shaking voice. ‘This is the third morning, it’s Sunday and she’s dressed casually. I don’t think we’re going into the industrial area for work this time. I never knew undercover cops worked in places like that.’ She started her car’s engine and the tick-tick-tick of the indicator could be heard as she prepared to pull out not far behind Ellen, who had reversed out of her driveway. 

“I’m just going to fast forward a bit,” Danni said. She had opened the nearby manila folder and was looking at a time code. With Ellen’s permission, she skipped ten minutes ahead. Kiera had followed Ellen to the supermarket, this was the uncut version of the first half of the clip to end up online, and Ellen sighed as she watched Kiera stalking her car, waiting for her return. “What she did,” Danni explained. “Is drove with the recording device on until she reached the supermarket, then she switched it off. You’ll come into the frame again soon; she’s just turned it on after spotting you exiting the supermarket.”

“Thanks Danni,” Ellen whispered under her breath as she watched that happen. She saw herself pushing a trolley towards her car. She opened the boot with her keys and began loading groceries. It was such an ordinary, domestic situation and Ellen barely recognised herself. Kiera, however, put a lot of effort into making sure that everyone else who saw the tape could recognize her; she gave them every opportunity. 

‘This is insane,’ Kiera said of what she was doing. ‘I can’t believe she hasn’t seen me. I am so fucking terrified that this Ellen Mackenzie woman is going to look around and see me…this woman is meant to be an undercover cop, so who knows what she might do to me if I get caught? I mean, she doesn’t look like a cop, not right now, but she looks fit enough, I guess…she just looks normal to me. I wonder what she’s done? It must be something really bad. She doesn’t look like a bad person but-oh shit!’ 

There was a commotion on the tape as Ellen looked around behind her. She seemed to squint into the distance, not far from the camera, but her eyes never directly settled on Kiera’s car or the camera; she didn’t see it. 

‘Oh shit, that was close,’ Kiera said in a breathless whisper. She adjusted the camera on the dash to zoom in on Ellen’s profile as Ellen turned back around and finished loading the groceries into her car. ‘God, I wonder if she just got some kind of weird feeling that she was being watched? I hope I’m not scaring her, I really don’t mean to…oh God, I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I have to…and there you go, taking your empty trolley back to the proper trolley return area like a responsible citizen; it’s more than most other lazy assholes ever do. Shit, I think she’s just a regular person. What if she’s not a cop at all? What if she’s, like, a mum? Or even if she is a cop…what if she’s good? I have such a bad feeling about this. I can’t believe I got fucking caught, I can’t believe it. I was just trying to help, mum, I promise I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’m gonna get out of here before her now, I think…I promised Lachie I’d be safe. I got enough today, I got enough.’

“All of the videos are like this,” Danni said as she stopped that file and searched for another. “In terms of her narration. We have transcripts here and there are repetitive displays of remorse and uncertainty. We’re certain Lachlan Fraser knew something.”

“It’s a pity we can’t ask him,” Ellen said. “But I want to see one of Peter. I want to know how much she had on him or on any of you; Angie, Oscar, and you Danni.”

“The three of us aren’t featured at all,” Danni assured her. “Just you and Pete. Uh…here we go. Here is the main video of Pete. It spans two files.”

In the video it was raining, and Ellen knew immediately when this had been filmed. It had been filmed on the morning of the last breakfast she ever went to with Peter, on the first day of the surveillance operation in the park. 

‘Oh yes!’ Kiera hissed in triumph from across the street when she was able to zoom in on Ellen. Ellen had appeared from around the corner and was walking briskly towards the familiar café. ‘Yes, finally. Third Friday lucky, I finally figured out where she goes after parking in that lot across from the police station. She’s definitely not dressed for a meeting with other police; I love her boots! She’s really pretty actually, and it looks like there’s someone waiting for her…hard to see under the umbrella…’ She zoomed the camera in and tried to focus it as best she could. She was not filming from inside a car this time, but was standing undercover-

“What’s across the street?” Ellen asked. “Why is she protected from the rain?”

“There’s a bus stop there,” Peter said on a sigh. “I remember a bus stop.”

“Oh,” was all Ellen could say to that. She remembered nothing. 

‘They look friendly,’ Kiera said as she was able to focus on Peter’s face, but zoomed in from such a distance it was difficult for the lens to pick up on finer details. It was definitely Peter, though, to all who knew him. ‘I’ve never seen this guy before,’ Kiera continued. ‘But Ellen knows him, she’s friendly with him. He’s older I think, it’s hard to tell from back here…he could be another cop. He’s not dressed like a cop, but…oh, I wonder if it’s a date. She’s put her arm through his and is leaning into him under the umbrella, smiling… It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile, I think, that’s so nice, but it’s hard to see. I might get closer, quickly before school…I reckon I could.’ 

The camera lens tilted downwards as Kiera obviously made her way across the road in the rain. The last glimpse the camera had offered of Ellen and Peter had shown them both disappearing inside the café, and Ellen watched with an open mouth and wide blue eyes. She felt stunned. And stupid. And she was becoming bloody angry.

The tape cut out, but before Ellen or Peter could protest Danni had leant forward and pulled up a second file. 

“She switched recording devices,” Danni explained. “She’s gone from a proper camera to her mobile phone.”

Kiera did not just casually wander past the café, she walked straight in and loitered towards the back of the queue with her phone held up. 

‘Pretending to text message,’ she mumbled as she swung the phone around to try to locate Ellen and Peter. She found them because they were sitting in a booth in the quiet back corner of the café. They were talking, smiling, but the filming paused as Kiera ordered a coffee to have there. She then sat in the booth right beside them with her table number. 

“Holy shit,” Peter whispered under his breath when he realised she had been sitting not a metre away on that Friday, and neither he nor Ellen had noticed or cared. 

Kiera could no longer film them without drawing attention to what she was doing, so she put the phone on the narrow wooden panel between the two booths and began recording the ceiling, and their voices. The café was noisy, but it was not so noisy that their conversation was completely obscured.

“Oh no,” Ellen mumbled when she heard her own voice. She might not have had any memory of a girl in the booth beside her, but she did remember that conversation with Peter. She had been so happy that morning, she remembered feeling content. Fuck.

‘I realised that Bernie Rocca really did a number on me all those years ago,’ she said.

‘Our old boss?’ Peter asked. He was sitting further away from where Kiera had been; in fact he would have been facing what was probably the back of her head, if he hadn’t also been focused on Ellen.

‘Yes. He hasn’t been our boss for five years and yet for the past few weeks I’ve still felt really guilty about meeting you for breakfast. I have thought about us doing something like this on and off for years, as friends or something more or whatever, but every time I thought the timing was right for us, that Italian accent was in my head, accusing me of using my position of power to seduce you and if I want to keep my job I should think again and keep up those professional boundaries, or else.’

‘Is that what he said to you seven years ago when he found out about our uh, what should we call it? Our year-long, motel-hopping, terrific casual sex, no-strings fling?’

‘Maybe we can work on an abbreviation?’ Ellen asked with a laugh, though from that point on her voice lowered and it became more difficult to hear both her and Peter over the general noise of the café. ‘…years ago? I never told you the details, did I? That’d be right, I was gutted. I felt like the… He gave me the look, and a lecture about professionalism…that I could either transfer out or stay and end it. It didn’t matter how I felt, I had my orders… the right decision, but I’m still thinking like him, still threatening myself, and I shouldn’t be.’  
‘Mac, Ellen, you only figured that…’

‘Yeah…today…the first day I lay in bed staring at…told hypothetical Bernie inside my head to fuck off so I could relax, because I was happy, these breakfasts make me happy, and I wanted to see you and it has got nothing to do with work. Or him.’

‘Thank Christ for that…’

‘Your coffee,’ the waitress who brought Kiera’s drink to her said. ‘Were you waiting on anything else?’

‘No, that’s everything thank you,’ Kiera replied. She sounded happy, friendly. 

So she should be, Ellen thought as tears welled in her eyes. She’d just hit the big time.

“You know,” she said as Danni stopped the tape. “I don’t think anyone has ever managed that before. No one’s ever managed to get any of us on tape like this…I still can’t believe that someone decided it should be me. I still can’t think of why.”

“It gets slightly worse,” Danni admitted with a wince. “Can I show you?”

“Yes,” Ellen said softly as her face flushed. Peter was rubbing his own jaw in disbelief as he also watched Danni work. 

“Kiera followed you from your home to the factory a couple of times,” Danni said. “That we know of, at least. We only know what she filmed. This same night, this Friday night, after school she went back to that base near our work and waited for your car to emerge. It emerged in a convoy of sorts, because-”

“Because it was the first night of the surveillance operation,” Ellen said quickly. She knew that, she knew what it meant. “Kiera saw us all leave, then. Angie in her car, me in mine, and you and Pete in the surveillance van.”

“Yeah, but Angie left first obviously and she’s not on the tape, Kiera wasn’t ready,” Danni said. She pressed play and readjusted the screen and volume once more. 

‘Come on, come on, come on,’ Kiera mumbled as the video materialised, just in time to catch a shot of the surveillance van turning out of the factory. The tinted windows obscured the two people sitting in the front two seats. ‘Oh, this is definitely some kind of police thing!’ she said from down the road. The vehicles drove away from where she was parked, and once she saw Ellen’s car following the van, she too pulled out. ‘This is Ellen in front of me. Wow, I wonder what I’ll get to film? I probably have enough, I guess, to satisfy D, but this is actually pretty addictive. And fun. Ha, I never thought I’d say that, I’m so fucking scared and maybe it’s adrenaline, actually, tricking me into thinking I’m having fun when really I’m just a ball of nerves. 

‘Driving…driving…I have no idea where we’re going right now, but I’m no longer afraid that she’ll realise I’m behind her. I’ve been doing this for a month now, one and off, not on the same days and never at the same times…except for Friday mornings because I really wanted to figure out where she was going after I lost her that first time…but I’d know if she knew I was behind her, I’d know if she recognised me. I think I’m safe. Ironic, because I’m probably behind at least three cops right now. Shit, I wonder if D’s going to be happy about this…does she know these others too? Like, does she know the guy from breakfast this morning too? 

‘He was Ellen’s lover, I reckon. He had nice eyes, he really likes her, I could tell. He hasn’t come to her house that I know of, but I’m not there every night…they could be sneaking off during the day? I dunno…definitely her lover, probably a cop. I think D would be really happy if I gave her him too…maybe I could even ask for, like, a bonus? Something more than just being let off the hook? I could try, maybe…if it could help mum…that’s what got me into this mess, I don’t want to let mum down…If I’m going to go to jail for the drugs or for this, if it all goes wrong – and shit, these undercover cops could really murder me – I gotta make it worthwhile.’

Kiera drifted off into silence for another ten minutes and Danni fast-forwarded the tape until Kiera parked on a very familiar footpath five cars ahead of where Ellen parked and at least a dozen cars in front of where Ellen thought the surveillance van had been that night. Danni and Peter would have been busy getting prepared by then, switching on cameras and talking to Angie via her communications device as she got ready to run. It had been raining that night as well, just as it had been that morning, and the persistently bad weather had definitely affected visibility; none of them had seen that car park up ahead, none of them had seen Kiera get out with her camera and move to the back seat with her car’s window down, so that she could film out the side. 

‘So fucking wet,’ she growled as she fiddled with the settings. She focused on Ellen’s car, tried to keep the screen clean, and waited. ‘There’s another sedan a fair way back and I reckon someone has gotten out of that and entered the park,’ she narrated in the meantime. ‘The van that was in front of Ellen is parked down the street as well, just sitting there. I reckon this is some kind of stakeout or police operation-’

Danni fast-forwarded the tape. 

‘Oh, here we go!’ Kiera announced. ‘Ellen’s just gotten out of her car, it’s hard to see and I’m not sure how well this is taping in the rain but she’s out, and she’s headed into the park. This is really weird…I wonder if it has anything to do with the sexual assaults I heard about on the news? Those women who were attacked? But it’s pissing down with rain at the same time, it’s freezing cold, I have no idea what she’s doing…but she’s gone in alone, no one’s gotten out of the van yet I don’t reckon.’ 

The tape turned off and then turned back on, but time had passed, and Kiera’s face suddenly filled the screen; she had turned the camera on herself. She wiped rain off her wet, fair face. Her nose was red from the cold and her voice was soft and breathy. 

‘It’s been about half an hour in the rain. Ellen’s just come out of the park and gone back to her car. She drove off pretty quick, and the van followed her away. I don’t know what to make of it yet…I know it sounds weird, but I actually feel bad for her, for Ellen. I like the look of her. I wish I could warn her, it would be so easy to walk up to her and just be like ‘you should be careful, maybe leave’, but I’d be dead if D found out that I spoke to her or tipped her off…she could be watching me, too.’


	22. Chapter 22

TWENTY-TWO

“This is how they found me, isn’t it?” Ellen asked as Danni switched off the tape. “All this time we’ve been wondering how anyone knew where and when to assault me on that surveillance job, we’ve assumed they had to know exactly what was happening, but that’s not true at all. This is how he knew where to find me that night.”

“We think so, yes. In a sense we’ve just gone backwards, a little,” Danni said. She looked both Ellen and Peter in the eyes, but it was Peter’s clear blue eyes she settled on. Ellen’s frown was deep and guarded, but Peter looked at her more openly. He was still listening. “On Wednesday afternoon and yesterday, after speaking to Jessica, we determined that this police officer – who we now believe was this D that Kiera refers to – either knew our undercover unit or knew someone on the inside. That estimated guess was based on things like the man who assaulted Ellen knew where she would be, which meant there was a strong possibility we were followed from the factory…it had to be an insider, right? However, we can now say – again – that it’s not the case.”

“That’s good news in a way,” Peter said. “It means Angie and Cam and yourself are less at risk. This man and woman involved so far, they just knew Ellen. Just her.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Danni said as she nodded. “It looks like Kiera managed to follow Ellen from her house to work, and from work to the park. That Friday was the first time she did that evening run with us…but it wasn’t the last. She did the same on Saturday as well, and she tried on Monday, but that was the day Ellen went home early, so her car never came out of the factory once Kiera was sitting there after school waiting. She did wait for you, Ellen, and if you listen to the tape, she sounds stressed and worried that something bad has already happened to you.”

“I’m elated,” Ellen said in a flat, unimpressed voice. “So our policewoman and unknown male assailant didn’t necessarily have any inside knowledge other than what Kiera had been able to tell this D person.”

“Probably true,” Danni said. “Having looked at all of the footage and having listened to Kiera and read the transcripts, it looks as though it was your home address that was always Kiera’s starting point. That is the key piece of information that D had on you.”

“That still was not common knowledge,” Peter said. 

“No, but it would have been a lot easier to find out than the location of the factory or details on police surveillance operations.”

“True,” he added on a sigh. “And we now have a plausible motive for Kiera’s murder; she tried to sell information on me to D and held out for cash. Any evidence of that?”

“There’s evidence of her making the suggestion,” Danni said. “We have chat room transcripts that Kiera very cleverly screen captioned and saved onto her laptop.”

“Clever or silly, depending on how you look at it,” Neil replied. “Either way it’s definitely self-incriminating.”

“Well yes,” Danni acknowledged. “But it’s terrific for us, and I can’t help thinking that it was what she wanted us to find, eventually. All this evidence left with Jess for us. She felt trapped. Actually, there’s another video I want you to listen to. Kiera explains it all a lot better than I ever could, sitting here trying to recount it to you.”

She leant over the laptop again but was startled when Ellen’s police badge flopped onto Neil’s desk right beside her. She turned to look at Ellen with wide eyes, but Ellen looked defeated and pissed off. 

“Take it,” she said. “I quit.”

“Mac-”

“No, I swear to God Danni,” she continued in a huff. “I didn’t notice. This girl wasn’t even qualified to drive and I don’t remember her. I didn’t see her outside my home, I didn’t notice a car following me – and we’re not talking some standard white sedan that’s a dime a dozen, this was some kind of little metallic gold buggy thing, right?”

“Well, yes, but-”

“I led a seventeen year old girl to the factory, to all of you. We’re lucky she was only seventeen, we’re lucky she didn’t know what she was doing, we’re lucky she didn’t tell these people exactly what was happening, otherwise we all might have been ambushed. We could have been ambushed, Danni, because I wasn’t paying attention. For God’s sake, she sat right beside Peter and I while we met for breakfast, and we were too wrapped up in each other to notice. God forbid we have a normal life.”

“No, Ellen, no one’s saying that,” Peter insisted gently.

“I don’t care, I’m clearly done,” she said. “I was done months ago. I was dangerous.”

“I’ll hold onto your badge,” Danni said before grimacing. “If you insist, but I really think you should watch this last-”

“Just show us the video,” Ellen insisted with a deep frown set on her brow. 

Danni pressed play and adjusted the screen. The video was of Kiera in her bedroom. It was night, the dim room was lit only by a lamp on her desk off to one side in the background, but it was not dark enough to obscure the tears on her fair cheeks. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in pyjamas, staring down into the camera lens. 

‘I wrote a letter tonight,’ she said with a sad smile. She picked it off the quilt and held it out in front of her. ‘See? I’m going to post it tomorrow on my way to school, before I upload this video onto my computer tomorrow afternoon at my friend’s house. That’s where my real computer lives, but if anyone is watching this, I guess you already know that. I arranged a meeting with D for the morning after next, I hope it will be the last time I have to see her ugly face, but I’m pretty scared. 

‘She promised me money if I told her where Ellen worked, and I said I would tell her…but I don’t think I will. I dunno. I’m going to try really hard not to. If the place I’ve got on film really is full of cops who are just doing their job and they’re trying to do it in secret…if D doesn’t know where they are then why should I tell her? What would she do if she knew? I don’t even understand why she needs to know, because I did what she asked and put the ad onto the chat rooms, and people can contact me if they want to go after Ellen themselves. If she wanted to do it, if she wanted Ellen for herself…well she’s the one that told me where Ellen lived so…why doesn’t she just go there and shoot her in her driveway or something, you know? If killing her is that important, shouldn’t she do it herself? Is this all to make the Detective I’ve been taping suffer? Because if you really hate someone there are easier ways to kill them. 

‘I don’t know how I got involved in this…I can’t believe I was stupid enough to get involved in this…which brings me to my letter. I thought I’d tape a copy of it, just in case. Jess keeps telling me to keep evidence of everything, keep records if I don’t go to the police now, because I can use them later maybe, maybe later they could help, and I’ve been trying to do it. She is so much smarter than me, but she hasn’t dobbed me in yet either, and I’m really grateful for that. I just need to handle this on my own, for mum. I’m gonna make it better, I’m gonna get away from this bitch. I’m so close.

‘Anyway, this is the letter I’m posting tomorrow. I’ve done the envelope so it looks like a bill or something really boring, I hope she gets it. Um, okay… Dear Ellen, you don’t know me but I’m a seventeen year old and I’ve been following you and taping you for a month. I wanted to tell you that you’re in danger. I have been involved in something kind of illegal, buying drugs to help my sick mum, and there’s a policewoman who found out about it. She said she would have me and the guy who helps get the drugs ready for mum arrested and put in jail if I didn’t help her, and that would really, really damage my mum’s health. Normal medicine doesn’t help her, and she can’t leave the house without me. So…I kind of got myself in a bind. I’m sorry.

‘This policewoman knows where you live and gave me your address. She’s pretty mad at you, Ellen…I think she’s trying to have you killed. She asked me to film you and get information on you, and to put an ad – a bounty I think it’s called in the movies – online saying that I had information and I was willing to talk for a price. She would take the money, and maybe I’d get a cut in addition to my freedom, and then I would have to tell the buyer something like your address or where you work or what your routine is. I really don’t want to have to do that…I’m thinking of lying if it happens, but obviously I’m scared about lying…and I’m not sure if I could do it. 

‘So I think that you should not stay at your home anymore, and you should go somewhere safe. Don’t even hide where you work because I found that place, and I haven’t been inside but the address is in my head and maybe I could be forced to say it. I’m going to try to quit, you see. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want you to get hurt, and this woman is trying to get me to sell information on you to really bad people who probably hate cops; they might kill you just for fun. I would hate that.

‘Here’s a tip. I don’t know where your male friend lives, the man with the curly light brown hair and blue eyes, so it would be safer with him. I saw you with him in a café last Friday morning, that’s the man I mean. I think he’s probably a police officer too, and he looks and sounds so nice. I told D that you had a boyfriend and I could describe him, but I haven’t showed her any of the videos. She wants to see a picture, I said I’d show her one, but I’ll pick one where his face is a bit fuzzy. You see, I have lots of videos of you, but D hasn’t seen any of them and she doesn’t know that they exist…she doesn’t know this letter exists either. I hope she never finds out. I only put the bare minimum of what D asked me to do on the web. I had to make it look good so that I was safe, but I hope you don’t get hurt. I’m really sorry. Please be careful.

‘See, I can try to pull out of the deal, or I can lie if someone tries to buy your information from me, but if I get found out or if D doesn’t want me to stop working for her then I might be in a lot of trouble. You still might be in trouble too, that’s why I’m sending this letter. I hope that you get this letter and you come after me before D does. I’m really scared, and I’m sorry. Please find me Ellen. My name is Kiera Rudonikis. I don’t want to write D’s name here, but if you come to my school or my home and arrest me before she does, I’ll tell you everything. Sincerely, K.

‘…And that’s it, that’s my letter. I don’t know if anyone has ever said they hope they get arrested…it’s ironic because the whole reason I got into this was because I didn’t want to be arrested, and now I’m begging this Detective I’ve been following to put me in handcuffs and take me away from here, so that I can be safe and I can make sure my mum is safe. I might put this directly in her mailbox tomorrow; maybe that would be faster, and I don’t think D is having me followed too. Anyway, I really have to go to bed now. This might be my last tape for awhile, or if Ellen gets my letter in the next couple of days, it might be my last video ever. Wish me luck. Night.’

“Aaaand that’s it,” Danni said softly as the video ended. “It is the last thing she saved on this laptop at Jessica’s house, on Wednesday night, less than twelve hours before she was killed. She was probably already imagining sitting here beside us while we watched it and she tried to explain.”

Ellen’s frown had deepened as she stood and put her hands on her hips. She walked a few steps away, towards the back corner of Neil’s office, before turning around to face Peter, Danni and Neil. They were all watching her expectantly, but Danni’s eyes were the most alert and firmly set on her as well. 

“What day was this filmed?” Ellen asked. “What day did she send this letter?”

“This was filmed Tuesday night,” Danni said. “She sent it Wednesday morning.”

“Right,” Ellen said. She nodded slowly and thought back. “Wednesday night…I think I got home late on Wednesday. That was, uh, shit…what was that night? I know we had something on.”

“Your birthday party,” Peter reminded her as kindly as he could when he saw a brief flicker of distress at the fact she suddenly could not remember. It pained him. “Your birthday was on Thursday, so Wednesday was the night we had a party at the factory after the surveillance job. It was the night we gave you that charm bracelet you’re wearing, Elle. You did arrive home late.”

“Right, um, sorry,” she said as she looked down at the silver bracelet on her left wrist. She wore it so frequently that most of the time she didn’t even remember it was there, but she knew that Danni, Peter, Angie and Cam had all picked two charms each for her. No one had ever gotten her such a meaningful present, and Peter had known that she was reaching the end of her tether in the job; he had insisted they get her something that she felt connected to. 

“Don’t be sorry,” Danni whispered gently.

“I didn’t check my mail that night,” Ellen mumbled as she looked back up, still frowning into the green eyes of her friend. “At least, I don’t think I did…I barely remember my own birthday party, and then the next day I didn’t even make it home. I…I wouldn’t have been able to check my mail until I was discharged from hospital but even then I don’t remember…I don’t remember if I ever got that letter. I have no memory of ever reading it, there’s nothing, I am so, so, so sorry-”

“No, no, wait,” Danni insisted as she stood and held a hand out to Ellen. “Wait, let me explain. Come and sit down. Before you hurt yourself apologising, this is where I get to stand up and take the blame. Sit.”

“But-”

“Sit, Mac!” Danni said with a frustrated half-laugh as she pointed from Ellen to the seat beside Peter. Ellen might have outranked Danni up until a few minutes ago when she verbally retired from the police force, but she did what she was told. “I know about the letter,” Danni told her, as if she needed further encouragement to settle. “This comes back to me. I’m sorry.”

“You’ve seen this letter?” Neil asked curiously. “Where?”

“Amongst Ellen’s mail. I’m not positive, but I’m fairly sure. It wouldn’t have made a difference…I mean the only way we could have prevented Kiera’s death on Thursday morning was if Ellen had checked her mail on her way in on Wednesday night, if around midnight or a bit later she had still insisted on opening and reading her mail before bed…and how many people would do that anyway? I think perhaps Kiera left this too late, that’s all. But um…Ellen, do you remember, when you were in hospital, Peter barely left your side?”

“Uh, yeah, vaguely,” she mumbled with a frown. “Not really but I’ll take your word.”

“Well I was in charge of going to your place to pack you a bag for the hospital,” Danni said. “I went to the factory and got your spare key, then I went to your house…I took in your mail. I have a vivid memory of carrying your mail into your house and putting it on the bench. Then, I put it in the bag I packed for the hospital. I thought if you were recovering well you might get bored and want a distraction, so I would pack your mail and you could go through it.”

“And did I?” Ellen asked as her face flushed. She had no memory of that, either.

“I don’t know,” Danni said honestly. “I think in all the panic and worry I forgot to tell you it was in there.”

“What happened to it then?” Neil asked. “Where is it now?”

“We didn’t take that bag interstate with us,” Peter announced thoughtfully. “We rushed off in the end, and we ducked back to Elle’s place very quickly to pack a suitcase…but it wasn’t the bag Danni brought to the hospital, which was more a canvas bag or backpack, right?”

“Mm,” Ellen hummed. “I remember the suitcase we took with us on our holiday.”

“Yes so, let me finish,” Danni said with a wary smile. “I packed up your house while you were away, remember? All your stuff is in a storage locker, I have those details, I have the keys…I’m fairly sure that black bag is in that locker. You would have come home from hospital, dumped it, gone back to using stuff out of your cupboard or only taken out the essentials, and then you ended up at Pete’s place the next night, and a hotel after that, and when you came back to pack for your getaway you just ignored this bag in the corner…you were still concussed, after all, and I never told you there was mail in it. Nothing struck me as important and I guess that’s what Kiera wanted, in case D or anyone else got there first and went through your mail.”

“So Kiera’s letter is possibly in a storage facility?” Neil asked. 

“Yes, but I only saw this report two hours ago and I’ve been busy reviewing all the files, I just haven’t had time to drive out that way. It’s at least an hour out of the city.”

“It can wait until morning,” Neil said. “It’s already time for me to go…I’ve left the kids at after-school care until the last possible moment as usual.”

“Can I drive out with you Danni?” Ellen asked. “Whenever you go…there’s just, there’s something I’d like to try to find.”

“Of course,” Danni said with a kind smile. “And Neil might have to dash off, but I don’t mind going tonight if you want. There’s a chance that Kiera added something to this letter that she didn’t read aloud – fingers crossed it’s D’s fucking name – before she sealed it in the envelope, so I’d like to get my hands on it too. At the very least, to check that it’s where I think it is. We could have had this a lot sooner, I apologise.”

“No, no, it’s not your fault,” Ellen said softly. “You did so much for me back then.” She stood up and quickly turned her back on them as her voice cracked. 

“We’ll go tonight then,” Danni said. She looked to Peter, who was rubbing his face tiredly and frowning. “You want to come Peter?” she asked. “You don’t have to.”

“No, you girls go. I want to look up some stuff on the computers here. Can I use yours, Dan? What are the chances her name actually starts with the letter D?”

“Oh, I’m fairly certain there’d be a D in there somewhere,” Danni said. She smirked and added, “And just to be clear, it’s not me.”

Peter laughed and even Ellen turned around and smirked at her. 

“Oh good mate,” Peter said, teasing her. “Thanks for clearing that up!”

“You’re welcome,” Danni said with a playful wink. She stood and picked up Ellen’s badge. “Ellen, I heard what you said before, but I’m not letting you leave this here. It still goes where you go, in case you get in trouble and need it for ID. Okay?”

“Fine,” Ellen said on a sigh as she came back to Danni and retrieved her badge. “Sorry. I’ll do it properly, when the time is right. I just…feel like an idiot.”

“You and me both. Let’s go out to the storage sheds and try to redeem ourselves.”

Peter also stood and walked over to Ellen. He stood beside her and rubbed her back as he looked into her sad, wary face. 

“Be careful with Danni, drive safe,” he said. “What are you picking up?”

“I want the little statue you had made for me, the silver Dorothy and Tinman one. I got that on the Wednesday before I was assaulted too, right? At the party?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Peter said. He leant down and shared a brief, gentle kiss with her. “I’ll see you at our temp home tonight. I’ll have dinner ready, okay?”

“Ooh, I wouldn’t miss it!” Danni answered with a broad grin suddenly. 

Peter rolled his eyes. 

“I suppose you’re invited,” he said reluctantly. It was for curious Neil’s benefit, and it was all a bit of fun, since their temporary home was Danni’s home, and Peter was hardly going to exclude her from her own kitchen. 

“What are you going to be doing at Danni’s desk?” Neil asked as he began to pack up his things. He was running really late for school pick-up, Max was going to be starving, and Charlotte was going to be mad and upset if they were the last children picked up from care. Mummy was never late, after all, but Neil swallowed his sigh and focused on Peter. 

“I want to start running some searches,” Peter said. “Nothing fancy, but we should be able to get a list together of policewomen Elle’s come into contact with, with a D in their name. It’d be interesting to find out how many women who have a name that begins with D are actually operational in the city at the moment too. I don’t think it’d be as long a list as you might think…not a huge number of girl’s names I can think of start with D.”

Ellen wasted no time proving him wrong as she smartly rattled off a fast list.

“Dana, Donna, Dawn, Danielle, Daniella, Dharma, Deanne, Diedre, Diana, Dianne, Denise, Daphne, Dominique, Deborah, Dorothy-”

“Okay, okay, I have been proved wrong by the master,” Peter said, laughing as he gripped Ellen’s back and gave her a firm squeeze. She was grinning playfully, and he much preferred seeing that beautiful smile than the expression that had been on her face just minutes earlier. “Love you mate,” he whispered as he kissed her goodbye.


	23. Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

“Thanks for driving Danni,” Ellen said as she wiped her damp eyes with a tissue half an hour later. “You must think I’m a ridiculous mess.”

“It’s okay,” Danni said softly. She took her eyes off the road and glanced sideways in time to see Ellen still dabbing at her eyes. “Oh hon,” she sighed as she reached out a hand and patted her friend’s thigh. “I know this is stressful, but it’s not your fault.”

“In the last few days I’ve gone from thinking someone was just trying to kill me, to thinking they could be after all of you as well, to now knowing that Kiera wanted my help…and I didn’t even know.”

“She left it too late to try to tell you,” Danni said. “It took her too long to find the courage. We can help her now. How’s Pete doing? He looked stressed too.”

“I think he feels like he’s not doing enough to help,” Ellen said. “Like we’re just going around in circles, and he’s frustrated by it. You know how proactive he is…he just wants to get in there and find something useful, he wants to fix it. He can’t of course, and so he’s stuck putting on a brave face most of the time. Meanwhile I just feel like I keep going backwards. I wasn’t this bad a few months ago…or maybe I was, I don’t know. I don’t know why I can’t stop weeping, shit-”

“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Danni asked as gently as she could. Ellen snorted and shook her head. 

“No, it’s too early for that,” she said on a half-laugh. 

“What?” Danni asked quickly, her eyes wide. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, um, just that…well I’ve told Peter that I’d like us to try. I’ve only been off the Pill a week, and Jesus, I only went on it a few months ago anyway because of him so…whatever, we’ll just wait and see. We’re not holding our breaths, but…maybe.”

“Oh my God, really?” Danni asked. She broke into a grin and risked another look at Ellen as she drove into the sunset. “I can’t believe that. He must have been so happy.”

“Yeah, he was,” Ellen said as she struggled to maintain her composure. “I’m just really emotional about it. I never thought I’d want children, I never thought anyone would want a baby with me, I never thought…well, I’ve never been in love before Danni, so I guess I’m just…adjusting. And I’m so old! I wasted so much time.”

“Mac, you’re thirty-seven, not fifty-seven. If you’ve been off the Pill a week, you’ve got hormones figuring out how to turn themselves back on right now. Say no more, it’s all good. Pete must be secretly ecstatic, cos for the record, he’s always wanted kids with you. You probably don’t remember me telling you this while you were in hospital, but when he and I had our little fling a few years ago now, the reason it stopped is because he confessed how he felt about you to me. Back then, he knew.”

Ellen nodded. She didn’t remember the conversation with Danni, but she- 

She frowned when something did come to her. Her mouth opened and it took a few seconds for her to find the words. 

“Stupid question,” she began. “But I wasn’t naked during that conversation, was I?”

“Ha! Yes, you were in the hospital ward’s shower,” Danni said. “I was supervising.”

“Oh my God, what?” Ellen asked with wide eyes as she stared at Danni. “Why?”

“Cos I said my mum and aunt were nurses so it was all good. We had a great chat!”

“Danni,” Ellen said plainly as she grimaced. Danni was giggling happily to herself. “Your mother and aunt were hairdressers. Hence the braiding skills.”

“Same thing!” Danni said gleefully.

“It is not!”

“Yes it is, I’ve seen a lot of hair!”

“Oh my God,” Ellen said as she sat back and covered her face with her hands. “Ohh, how embarrassing. Oh, please erase that from your memory. There are so many things I can’t remember about that week, and that’s bad enough, but this I remember? Shit!”

“Yes, alas, I was so distracted by your nakedness I forgot to tell you about the mail I packed in your bag. What a pity.”

“Stop it!” Ellen said as she started laughing. “Oh, I suppose it’s no big deal…another knock on the head or a tighter grip around my throat and I’d have suffered all sorts of indignities in that hospital. At least I was on my two feet and apparently able to talk!”

“You didn’t tell me you wanted a little baby-Pete.”

“No, that was a decision I made while we were away and I was feeling healthy and loved and relaxed. I feel less healthy now, stressed, and so up and down ever since I set foot back in this city…I don’t know if I can even get pregnant, the way that I am. I know I definitely am not fit for duty, let alone motherhood. So I think we should just bait the chatrooms and then Peter and I should just leave, Danni.” 

“What would you do?” 

“I don’t know. Get a house somewhere near the ocean – Peter’s got all that money from the sale of his old house, and I have a little from the sale of mine – and then I’ve told him that I want to be at home for a time. I don’t know how long. I need…peace, and sunshine, and not feeling like I’ve been demoted, and I want to learn how to cook better food, like Peter, and I want to sleep without the nightmares, or if I do have them I want to be able to wake up in a bed that’s in my own home, you know? Somewhere I feel safe with my family. I’ve been thinking I could write a book…maybe it’s because I was almost killed, and maybe it’s because I’m not sure if I ever actually will have children, or if I’d live long enough to tell them about my life…I’d like to write it down. I wouldn’t mind getting a dog either, a puppy to love.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Danni assured her. 

“I feel ashamed to admit all that though,” Ellen mumbled as she dabbed at her eyes again. Her tissue was bunched up in a tiny, wet ball that hardly seemed effective, but Ellen was clutching it determinedly. “Like I…I feel like a failure, admitting it.”

“Why?” Danni asked. 

“Because I’m meant to be this modern, icy career-woman, aren’t I? I’m a Detective Senior Sergeant, I’m highly intelligent, I can’t cook, and all my relationships to date have failed, if you could even call them that. I’ve never thought of anywhere I’ve lived as a home, I’ve never felt like I was a part of a family…I’ve never even had a pet! It’s like I’ve had a breakdown very slowly over the past couple of years, probably starting when Bill Hollister got blown up just as my relationship with him was beginning, and now I’m sitting here talking like a completely different person…just like some ordinary woman. Kiera said it herself, right? I could be a mum, or just a good woman. She never even met me and that’s the impression she had, it was the impression I was giving her before I even realised it was what I maybe wanted.”

“But you are a good, ordinary woman,” Danni said. “You always have been.”

“I was a cop first, Danni. I have always been a cop first. It’s my identity. That’s me.”

“Yeah,” Danni agreed softly. “I feel that too sometimes. I know Neil does, trying to balance being a dad with the job…have you spoken to Peter? What does he say?”

“Oh!” Ellen said on a scoff as she rolled her eyes. “His ‘special theory’ is that I haven’t changed at all, but at work I used to see myself as a mum to all of you without thinking about my identity that way, and now that the unit has closed I miss having people to look after, I miss having people who look up to me, I miss having that responsibility…and of course I love him, so now I’m thinking about ways I can put those parts of my identity back into a life with him outside of work, and so I feel braver about a baby. That’s his happy story about how I came to change my mind.”

“Ahuh,” Danni said with a smirk. “Is it simpler than that, or more complex?”

“Simpler,” Ellen whispered as she looked at her lap. “It’s just something I want to try because I trust him, unguarded; I’ve never let myself be as intimate with anyone as I have with Peter, and I’m not just talking about sex or making love, but everything else in life as well. We’re stronger together than apart, and it’s reassuring. He and I are family no matter what, but very simply, I can imagine it now. I can imagine it for us.”

“It’s the right time, perhaps,” Danni agreed. Ellen nodded. 

“Yes, that’s what I meant. I feel like it’s the right time. I think I’m ready.”

“That’s wonderful. Keep me posted okay?”

“Yeah,” Ellen said softly as she sighed and looked out the window. It was dark and cold, and condensation partly obscured her view of the passing street. “This D woman is having fun, isn’t she,” she said. “It would have been easy to kill me, but she doesn’t want me dead as badly as she wants me to suffer. What did I ever do to her, Danni?”

“I don’t know, but I’m hoping she still feels like playing a bit of a game with you, because it’s a lot less dangerous than the alternative, where she runs out patience.”

*

Peter held the phone to his ear as with his free hand he flicked through pages in a file he had laid open on Danni’s desk. On her computer screen in front of him were digital records he had also found, but he was focused on the ringing phone in his ear.

“Hi, this is Angie Pierce,” Angie said as she answered. 

“Ah, just who I wanted to speak to,” Peter said with a smile. “It’s Pete.”

“Well howdy,” Angie replied with a laugh. “How are you? How’s the case?”

“I’m pretty good, and we’re making progress. I’m calling to tap your memory. Got a few minutes?”

“I do,” she said. “Do you want Cam as well? Because I’ll need to call him in-”

“No, I called for you Ange, it’s you who could help me,” he said. “But first, you know how Danni and I called Cam at work last night?”

“Yes, he told me about it this morning, and don’t worry, we understand your concerns and Shirley is a crack shot. We’re all taking extra precautions all the time.”

“Good, but we’ve now had Kiera’s laptop analysed, and it doesn’t look like Kiera passed on any information about the rest of us to these people, just Mac.”

“Do you have any idea why yet?”

“I’m starting to get one, maybe,” he said. “But it doesn’t make much sense to me right now. Kiera referred to our policewoman mastermind as D. Apparently D knew about Kiera buying the pot for her mum, and she threatened Kiera and Lachlan with jail unless Kiera helped her…I don’t think D directly threatened Lachlan, but I am certain that Kiera told him what was going on. He did not encourage her to come forward to the police, stupid man, he just told her to go along with it and to take care of herself.”

“Well he never was an Einstein,” Angie said on a sigh. “Do you think his advice would have been different if he knew you and Danni were cops?”

“Doubt it,” Peter said on a laugh. “He didn’t trust us that much, we were just clients.”

“So this D woman was blackmailing Kiera into helping expose Mac,” Angie said. “At least we’ve got an initial. Did she know where the factory was?”

“Kiera did, but D did not,” Peter said. “I’ve just been reading the video and chat room transcripts that IT have put together and that Kiera saved onto that laptop for us, and D asked her for the location of the factory…Kiera promised to tell her at their meeting on Thursday morning, but my guess is she refused. She was freaked out, trying to back out. She wrote Elle a letter a couple of days before she died…Danni and Mac have gone searching for it now because they think it’s been misplaced in the hurry to get Mac out of that house after her hospital stay, and Danni packing up for her.”

“Did you just call her Elle?” Angie asked with a giggle. “That’s sweet but weird!”

“Oh, sorry, yeah I actually don’t call her Mac much unless I’m talking to you lot.”

“So Kiera wrote Mac a letter. Confessing?”

“Basically yes, and asking for help. It was just too late, because Mac never saw it.”

“No, well she ended up in hospital on her birthday and the night before was her party and it was late and she was distracted…and if she’s anything like me; collecting mail has never been a priority because no one ever sends me anything worth reading.”

“Exactly,” Peter said. “So they’ve gone off searching and I’ve been using my brain for a few hours, and before you make a joke about that, does this initial D ring any bells for you?”

“Oh, uh, let me think…Actually no, you tell me what you’re thinking and I’ll think while you’re talking.”

“Okay,” Peter said, chuckling at her roundabout request. “As you probably know, since we got back we’ve been going back through all these files to do with Mac. We’ve got a list of all the cops she’s rejected for transfers into the unit over the years, men and women, and Danni and Mac have both gone back through Mac’s caseload for her fifteen year career, mostly the last ten years in undercover.”

“Yeah, and from what Cam and Mac have told me, no one mentioned in those files has jumped out at them as likely suspects.”

“When I heard the name D, I reckon I remembered something,” Peter said. “I didn’t tell them; Elle was really upset about this letter Kiera wrote and I don’t think Danni was too happy with herself for taking it out of Elle’s letterbox and getting it mixed up with the rest of her stuff that’s gone into storage, so I didn’t want to pre-empt anything, but I’ve had a better look at the transcripts from the laptop now, and I’ve been trawling through the old files, and I want to see if you remember this chick.”

“You’ve found a suspect?” Angie exclaimed. “Oh Pete, really? About bloody time! Well done! Let me call in Cam, I’ll-”

“Whoa, hold up there Ange, I want to pick your brain first. I don’t know if she’s a suspect, it’s just…possible. It was also a really, really long time ago.”

“Okay, talk,” Angie said. “I’m so glad I might actually be able to help right now. What’s it to do with me? How can I help?”

“Feeling a bit left out, were you?” Peter asked with a chuckle at the level of excitement he could hear in Angie’s voice. 

“Yes, go on, who is she? What’s she to do with me?”

“Do you remember an incident on the job eight years ago? You were very new, I think maybe you’d only been in the job for a month or two. Looking at the dates I know Elle and I had just started seeing each other outside of work, but Oscar – Cameron, sorry – he hadn’t transferred in yet.”

“Oh, wow, Cam and I started within a month of each other Pete,” Angie said. “So if he wasn’t part of the team according to the files or the timeline, that meant it was sometime in my first month. Uh…what sort of incident am I trying to remember?”

“Ellen killed a man in a case we worked with Missing Persons,” Peter said quietly, so that no one around him could hear. “You were there, she’s never talked about it-”

“Oh…the kidnapping case?” Angie asked. “Was it a kidnapping? Is that right? I remember some kind of basement, and I found this girl who’d been missing, but the target followed me in. I was wired, it was one of my first jobs so you and Mac weren’t far away…he didn’t have a weapon besides his bare hands, and I think I was able to say something to that effect over the wire, so you knew it was safe to come in…Mac literally kicked that basement door in and shot him…in the face? Was it the face? I remember the girl screaming, I remember holding her while she screamed.”

“Yeah, that’s the one I’m looking at,” Peter said with a sigh. Angie remembered screaming, but Peter just remembered Ellen’s vacant expression that night in the motel room, and her insistence that she was fine when he refused to sleep with her. 

“Jeez Pete,” Angie continued. “That was a really long time ago…it’s still in my head but I haven’t consciously thought about it in years. Was there another cop involved at the time whose name starts with D?”

“Not exactly,” Peter said. “It was the girl’s name.”

“What?”

“The girl in that basement, the victim you went down to retrieve…her name was Dina, like Tina with a D.”

“Please tell me you did not actually randomly remember that?”

“Yeah, I did,” Peter said thoughtfully. “That first night after the shooting, Elle woke up beside me in a cold sweat after dreaming you and the girl were both killed because she didn’t get there in time. I talked with her, calmed her down. I remember because it was the first time I saw her cry, and it was the first time I saw and felt…something I wasn’t expecting. But like you, I hadn’t thought about the case in years, it’s just that something clicked this afternoon in Neil’s office when I heard Kiera calling her D.”

“You heard her?”

“Yeah, she narrated all the times she filmed Mac, like she was talking to herself to the camera, and she loaded them all onto the laptop that she hid at her friend’s house-”

“Genius!”

“Yeah, it’s a pity we found it too late, but it’s all there,” he said. “What’s not there is confirmation about who D really is…but I think this is a possible.”

“A fifteen year old girl whose life Mac saved?” Angie asked in disbelief. “Did Mac and Danni review that file?”

“Oh yeah, they’ve both read everything, but they weren’t thinking about a child. In their head, they were looking for an adult, and it got me thinking, what have we missed? There has to be someone or something important in her past, some actual reason why this woman is so set now on torturing Mac the way that she is… Elle’s my fiancée, Angie, I am not going to stop until I find out who’s doing this. Mac and Danni have been looking for policewomen, for adult men and women in these files…no one has paid any attention to the children who are now no longer children.”

“Dina would be…early twenties? Twenty-three?”

“Yes. What do you remember about her?”

“Uh…shit Peter, that’s testing me now. Maybe brown hair, maybe…oh, did she have really white skin? Like, snowy white? With freckles? And brown eyes? Maybe that’s her. I have this picture in my head of me holding her. If I close my eyes and try to remember…I think she was very pale. She’d been in a basement of course, so duh.”

“Yeah, that’s her,” Peter said with a chuckle. “Do you remember anything about her besides what she looked like?”

“No, just the screaming, that type of traumatic screaming that stays with you. I didn’t have anything to do with her once I found her, because she was taken away and…oh…Mac! Mac would have interviewed her afterwards! I’m sure of it.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Peter said. “I’ve pulled up the hardcopy file and Mac’s statement is here. The first part details everything that happened in the field; it outlines our op, what we heard over the wire, how she went in and busted the door and shot the target. Then the second part of the report details the taking of Dina’s statement at police headquarters later that day. It’s brief, it says Dina was deeply traumatised and refused to cooperate, a psych evaluation was ordered, plus counselling, but I can’t see that paperwork in the file, it’s just not here. We’ve only got Mac’s statement to go on, in terms of Dina’s state of mind and what she said in the hours after the rescue.”


	24. Chapter 24

TWENTY-FOUR

“Why wouldn’t the psych report be there?” Angie asked. “Has it been taken or-”

“I guess it actually was just never copied over to our unit’s records, because that was us done after that, and because Dina was a victim, not a suspect or anything. We’d done our job, case closed, and everything for us from that point on was about Mac getting cleared on the shooting and making sure you were okay, the new kid on the block… Looking after Dina was up to her family and Missing Persons.”

“Mm,” Angie hummed. “So why exactly would she be a person of interest now? Mac saved her life.”

“I dunno, just a bad feeling in my gut,” Peter said. “In one of her videos, Kiera referred to D as something like, ‘I don’t want to see her ugly face’…and it just rang a bell? And here in Mac’s report from eight years ago, it says that during her attempts to question Dina, the fifteen year old was belligerent and repeatedly suggested that I – Mac – ‘get my ugly face out of her face’.”

“It’s a common kind of insult.”

“Ahh, it gets better,” Peter said. “I tried to find out what she’s been up to…she doesn’t have a driver’s licence.”

“So?”

“Let me say that again; she doesn’t have a driver’s licence under her old name,” he stated. “Get this…her name now is Belinda Brady…and she is a Police Constable.”

“What?” Angie asked on a gasp. “Really?”

“Ahuh, I just made the links on the computer. It all matches up. It’s her.”

“Has she applied for undercover or anything like that?”

“She’s not on the list of rejects that Ellen was working from, but Ellen was only looking at the people she had rejected who she had actually met and interviewed from within the merit pool. She has not looked more broadly at applications to the Covert Services merit pool itself…assuming that if she hadn’t met them, then chances are there’s not going to be an issue with her. But Belinda Brady did apply to that merit pool one year ago, and again six months ago, and both times she was rejected because she was young and inexperienced…but you will never guess where she is now.”

“Oh God, where?” Angie asked on a pained groan. “She’s not right there behind you in Homicide or anything is she?”

“I fucking hope not!” Peter said on a chuckle. “No, Ange, she’s working in the Special Response to Drug Crimes Taskforce. She’s just a Connie, only two years of active service, but after the restructure and a number of senior operatives choosing to step back from undercover work back to general duties like Cam, or taking retirement or that kind of thing, she slid right in! She probably had Reg Masters begging for it.”

“Is she in the city branch of the Taskforce?”

“Yep, she’s working in the Smack Squad according to her record. Heroin Branch.”

“That was the section of the Taskforce that Masters wanted you, Mac, and Danni all to join.”

“Ahuh,” Peter said. “Mac turned him down at least twice, thank God! Prior to that, Belinda was just in General Duties and I know her old station. It’s not Kiera’s local or Lachlan Fraser’s…but it’s in the vicinity. She would not have been far away.”

“So this girl we saved eight years ago is a cop now?” Angie asked. “And she’s changed her name?”

“She’s gone from Dina Davis to Belinda Brady,” Peter said. “DD to BB, but she is a D, and she is a policewoman, and she does know Elle.”

“She’s just twenty-three though.”

“You can be a psycho at twenty-three,” Peter said. “Honestly, Mac’s statement about this kid is really weird, guarded, like…I really want to talk to her about it.”

“Then why are you talking to me about it?”

“Ah, I wanted to see what you thought first, cos you were there. I don’t want to upset her. She’s kind of stressed, Ange, and she’s still run down, she wants this behind her, she feels responsible about Kiera now as well…and she’s scared. She’s just a bit frightened, yeah? She won’t come out and say it, but she’s right on the edge.”

“Oh God, of course,” Angie said as she softened. “Look, I’m not sure what to say Pete. I don’t remember the girl herself. I remember Mac shooting the target’s head off in front of us; I was only twenty-six or so myself at the time and it’s not something you forget in a hurry, but I had forgotten her name. The fact that she’s changed her name and is a cop now, I find that very interesting. I think you’re probably right in that Mac and Danni were looking for an adult who stuck out in the files, and they probably brushed right past Dina because she was a victim, not a perp, and not a cop.”

“Do you think I’m reaching here?” Peter asked. 

Angie took a minute to think and breathed deeply, before saying, “No”.

“No?”

“I think you have an incredible memory,” Angie said. “And I know Mac’s struggling a lot with her memory, and I’m glad you’re there with her. I think you also have really excellent instincts Pete, you both do actually…and if this is not sitting well with you, even if it only occurred to you an hour or two ago, it’s worth pursuing. Dig deeper.”

“So you don’t reckon they’re all gonna laugh at me? The Head of Homicide?”

“Oh, maybe Neil, and Danni, maybe at first!” Angie assured him as they both laughed. Angie quickly grew serious and more thoughtful as she continued, “The hurdle you have to get over is that Mac saved Dina’s life. Mac is going to feel like she saved this girl’s life, let alone mine as well. Bottom line, this girl Dina you’ve remembered was a victim. There would have to be, uh, how do I put this? There would have to be something wrong with her, for her to turn around eight years later and organize this at just twenty-three years of age, to go after a Detective Senior Sergeant? However, the flipside of this, the fact she’s tried to get into Covert Services so young, twice, it could be perceived as desperately trying to get closer to Mac-”

“That’s exactly what I thought,” Peter said. “What if this kid wants to be close to Mac, but hasn’t been able to achieve that as quickly as she might like, and she can’t even try to get to know Mac on the system because all our personnel files from Covert Services are protected. That’s gotta be frustrating, maybe she’s getting desperate.”

“Yeah…throw in some malice and it fits. I hate to say it, but it fits, and you know what else is eerie but true, Peter? ”

“What?”

“If she’s only twenty-three…she would have blended in watching a bunch of seventeen year old schoolgirls. She could have picked her target very easily, she also could have struck up a conversation with Kiera or her friends either in a group or Kiera alone, and they would not have suspected she was a cop if she was in plain clothes, dressed her age… She could have chosen Kiera, waited until she knew how to use her target by finding out about the drugs and Lachlan, and maybe even that he was listed in the system as being currently under investigation by Covert Services; maybe that gave her a bit of a laugh and sounded just perfect. And if you’re a manipulative twenty-something, boy do you have power over vulnerable teenagers. They want to trust you, they want to look up to you, and then wham…you nail ‘em.”

“That’s very insightful, Senior Constable,” Peter said as he shuddered with anxiety. “You’ve given that a lot of thought?”

“No, it just occurred to me then,” Angie said more simply with a laugh. “Plus, I remember being a cop in my early twenties, and I’d be out on the beat or even doing school visits, standing in front of classes, watching kids just a few years younger than me, and suddenly they seemed like babes, you know? Just little kids. Kiera…or any of those girls who D might have considered blackmailing…they were sitting ducks.”

“If D is in fact Dina Davis, or Belinda Brady, then I’d have to agree,” Peter said. “However, there’s nothing in the old case report here or in her staff file about how clever or manipulative she is or anything like that. I could be totally on the wrong track. I could be way, way off the mark, Ange. This was eight years ago, and I’m only thinking of it now, because Kiera said something about a D and her ugly face?”

“Yeah, okay, it struck you at an odd time and it doesn’t seem to be rationally connected to anything, but the mind is a crazy thing, and our instincts are sometimes even crazier. But more importantly for us all, do you know what else Pete?”

“What?” he asked. 

“This man we’re looking for, he killed Kiera and tried to kill Mac nearly four months ago now…and in that four months, besides that car thief Hamish Berger who Mac and Homicide discounted really quickly, this is the first and only name I have heard anyone suggest to me as a genuine person of interest. It is the only name. Mac and Danni have been all through those files and no one has stuck out. This girl Dina sticks out for you. I think you should tell them. I think you should be very, very careful-”

“We’re not in the safe house anymore,” Peter told her quietly. “We’ve moved, we’re secure. Only Danni knows where we are. Not even the Head of Homicide knows.”

“Oh good,” Angie said on a sigh. “Because whoever this D woman is, whether it’s Dina-Belinda or someone else close to you, she’s manipulative, she can make people trust her, but underneath she’s a cold-blooded bitch quite happy to stand back and issue directions. Please be careful. Please look after Mac. She’s doing okay, right?”

“Yeah, she’s okay. She just needs a few extra hugs most of the time. You wouldn’t know it, given what her reputation is or always was, but she loves a good cuddle.”

“Oh, don’t we all!” Angie said on a sad laugh. “I didn’t realise how wound up Cam and I both were until we got out here and started to decompress, and Mac’s always been the most wound up person I ever knew. She was relaxed at the wedding but I bet since you got back to the city she’s started winding herself back up again, am I right?”

“Pretty much,” Peter said. “Old habits die hard.”

“Mm, very true. Thank you for calling me Peter. I’m glad I could help. Your memory is incredible, actually! I’m pretty excited. I think this is a good starting point. I will think more deeply on that incident, but I was young myself, and so green…it’s the trauma I remember most easily. The girl…she was just in shock, we both were, or that’s what I thought at the time. Does Mac’s report make her sound a little off?”

“Mac’s report is professional but guarded, and it feels incomplete,” Peter said. “Knowing her as well as I do and having read hundreds of her briefings over the last decade…reading that old report now, it’s like she’s deliberately left something out. It feels half-assed and that is not how I would normally describe any of Mac’s work. This is just that point-five percent of her work that’s not up to scratch. I’d love to ask her about it but I’m afraid she won’t remember. Not remembering upsets her.”

“Peter, you’ve gotta upset her,” Angie insisted. “Tell her the report stinks, make her angry, ask her what she left out, make her cry, I don’t care, just make her remember. My understanding is that Mac’s memory is really only buggered up from around the time she got her head slammed into the footpath, it’s just the day or two either side of that assault that she can’t remember…but ask her to remember something from eight years ago and she might even be able to give you a very detailed account of Dina.”

“Yeah, you might be right there,” Peter said on a sigh. “Sorry Ange, I’m just tired.”

“I understand. Can I tell Cam about this? He wasn’t there at the time, but he’s just walked in and caught the end of our chat…he’s gesturing and jumping around and making faces, and mum is wagging her finger at him for being a pain in the bum…stop it Cam, it’s Peter, we’re just talking, they’re okay! Ah, we’re freaking out up here. I’m not sure I’ve ever told him about this case, Peter, now that I think of it.”

“Yeah, you can tell him,” Peter said as he laughed. “If it’s her you’re pretty safe out there too, cos she’s definitely here on duty in the city. I can’t help but wonder how much she’s gotten our old mate Reg Masters to talk about Mac in the last few months as well. The Inspector would just adore a young Constable sucking up to him. He’d be only too happy to dish the dirt on the Ice Queen who always refused him, I’m sure.”

“Ha, this is true. Oh, and Peter, don’t forget lover boy,” Angie said. “The face licker. Her accomplice. Mac’s always said he attacked her a bit like a cop too, remember?”

“Oh, how could I forget? Mac doesn’t remember the licking because she was unconscious, but thanks to bloody Hamish Berger who witnessed the whole thing and recounted it to her with delight, she still wakes up some nights and rushes off to throw up in the loo because she dreams about this sicko in his fancy running skins licking her face while she’s dying. It’s grand. I can’t wait to find him, I really hope I’m the one to do it too…but if we identify the mysterious D, she might lead us right to him.”

“Good luck, keep me posted,” Angie said. “Make sure Danni and Mac don’t do anything stupid. Especially Mac, she does not need to prove herself to any of us…make sure she knows that. All three of you stay safe, okay?”

“I’ll tell her Ange, I promise,” Peter said with a smile. “Thanks for talking it through with me mate. We miss you down here.”

“Miss you too, give Mac a hug for me, and you’re welcome. Call anytime.”

*

“Tada!” Danni said as she held the roller door just above her head and gave it a final thrust, pushing it up onto its rollers far above her. “There should be a light switch on the left,” she said to Ellen who was standing beside her with a torch. Ellen used the torch to find her way to the light switch and then turned it off. They were in just one large storage compartment in an outdoor complex. Behind them was Danni’s car, parked in the middle of a cement street lined with similar compartments. 

“Wow,” Ellen said as she stared at her furniture and boxes of her belongings all clumped together. “It’s strange when you see it all like this.”

“Yep,” Danni said on a thoughtful sigh. She took a step forward and put her hands on her hips. “I haven’t been here since they took delivery and I followed to make sure it was all securely stored in here and that my access worked. They know this is a cop’s locker, which is how I can get in after hours. Special access…I might have flashed a kind smile or two at the guy behind the desk to organize that one.” She grinned at Ellen and wiggled her eyebrows playfully as Ellen chuckled.

“Well it’s paid off now,” she said. “Okay, so…any idea where we’re looking here?”

“First things first, your beautiful little silver statue we got you for your ten years in the unit,” Danni said. She pointed to a box marked ‘bedroom’. As Ellen got closer, she realised that also written in marker beneath that was the word, ‘Oz’. She knew it had nothing to do with reminding them which country they were in. 

“Thanks Danni,” Ellen said of her friend’s superior labelling skills. She used her fingernails to pick at the edge of a strip of tape across the top, and soon the box was open. Danni had used one of Ellen’s scarves to wrap the statue that depicted Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz finding the stationary and rusted Tinman in the forest. Peter had had it made by a silversmith he knew to remind her that even when she felt like she had lost her heart, that she was being heartless, or sacrificing too much of herself to the job, it was only because she had leant the job and her friends those parts of herself; she held them up, and they all understood that sometimes it was heavy lifting. 

She had only spent one night with it sitting at her bedside before she was assaulted, and she had not seen it since. Tears filled her eyes as she unwrapped it and stood. The memory returned to her. She held both the statue and the unfurled scarf close to her as she turned and began looking for the black bag that Danni had brought to the hospital. 

Danni had already found it, of course, and was crouched over it on the cement floor. She had removed a handful of clothes and toiletries and was rummaging through whatever was left. Danni had packed that bag for Ellen in a panic while Ellen was still lying in her hospital bed with a serious concussion, so Ellen guessed there was a lot of useless crap that had been haphazardly thrown in on a quick run around Ellen’s house.

“Is it there?” she asked after another minute passed. 

“Yes, yes it is,” Danni said. She sat back on her heels and Ellen crouched down beside her. Danni was holding a stack of mail. “Let’s hope there were no important bills in here.”

Ellen chuckled as she nervously watched Danni flick through the envelopes. A bank statement, a credit card offer, a letter from the police union, and then a hand-addressed envelope that, though neatly scripted, stood out simply because it was not a typed label, and there was also no postmark. 

“No postmark,” Danni said as she thought the same thing. “This is it, she put it into your letterbox on Wednesday. Do you want to do the honours here or at home?”

“Here,” Ellen said. She sat down properly on the cement floor and rested the statue in her lap, as Danni also sat down. The floor was cold but Ellen knew this would not take long. This first read would be to look for anything new, anything to tell them who D might actually be, or who her accomplice might be. Ellen took deep breaths as she held the paper that Kiera had folded and read the script she had written. Her hands shook as she tried her best to take her time and to pay attention to each line.

“Anything?” Danni asked as Ellen finished with the first page and handed it to her, before moving onto the second.

“Nothing new,” she said. “She read it aloud word for word, nothing’s been added.”

“Okay, let me read too,” Danni said. Ellen quickly scanned the second page and moved to the third, as Danni quietly accepted the second page and held it behind the first. She smiled to herself at the way they were just quietly sitting in the middle of a storage warehouse that was mostly open to the elements of the cold winter night, reading like little children on a sleepover. This wasn’t exactly the most fun she had ever experienced, but it did make for a nice change, and the cold was refreshing. 

“Nothing,” Ellen whispered as she stared at the way that Kiera had signed off with simply the first initial of her name, K. It was artistic, neat, practiced.

“Mm, it’s the same,” Danni agreed. Ellen waited patiently for her to finish reading the rest of the pages as well, and then they looked each other in the eyes with blank, accepting expressions. “Home?” Danni asked. “Peter did say he was going to cook.”

“Home,” Ellen agreed. She picked up the statue and wrapped it in the scarf again before she stood, while Danni put the letter back into the envelope. Ellen offered her a hand up which she accepted, and then walked back to the car to wait, while Danni picked up a pole from the side of the door to help lower the high roller door far enough for her to complete the lock-down manually. 

Minutes later, Ellen’s mobile phone rang just as she was putting on her seatbelt and as Danni started the engine. They were leaving with very little, but Ellen felt much calmer now that they were in possession of Kiera’s last words, and now that Ellen’s solid silver treasure was sitting heavily in her lap. She was tired as well. Each day seemed long, and laughs over lunch with Eve and Amy seemed long ago.

“Hello?” she said into her phone as she answered. 

“Hi Elle,” Peter said. “I just got to our residence…are you two very far? I’m going to make a pizza.”

“Oh, that sounds good,” Ellen said on a grateful sigh. “Thank you Pete, I’m starving. We’re just leaving storage now, so we’ll be about an hour.”

“Perfect. Did you find the letter?”

“Yes, and nothing new I’m afraid but at least now we have it. It’s not lost, it’s safe.”

“And Dot?”

“Dot and the Tinman are safe as well.”

“Okay well tell the speedster behind the wheel to drive carefully. She’s nearly killed me in the surveillance van multiple times, just horrible at merging, so watch her! When you get home, I’ve got some awesome news. Or maybe not awesome. But it will be accompanied by wine, chocolate, and pizza…possibly in that very order!” 

Ellen laughed. She was ready for bed, but she was certain to fit in a glass of wine and a few treats for dinner first, and whatever Peter had to say, at least he sounded happy.


	25. Chapter 25

TWENTY-FIVE

“Danni!” Charlotte exclaimed the next morning when Danni, Ellen and Peter arrived at Homicide. Charlotte and Max had been sitting at Danni’s desk with Neil standing beside them, making sure they didn’t see anything inappropriate while they coloured in, like crime scene photos or post mortem reports. He turned at Charlotte’s exclamation and smiled at them, with an apology written in his eyes.

“Hello Lottie!” Danni said as Charlotte slid off her chair and ran to her for a hug. Danni embraced her warmly despite the eyes of a number of other Homicide Detectives sliding her way. “Hi Max! What are you both doing here?”

“Celia’s still sick,” Max explained with wide eyes as he nodded. His curly red hair bounced around his face and he pursed his lips like a bemused little adult.

“Barry’s just gonna watch them while we talk,” Neil said more seriously as he gestured for their office. “I’ll be in shortly.”

“Take your time,” Danni said. Charlotte separated herself from her and Danni gave both her and Max a little wave as she led Peter and Ellen into Neil’s office. 

“So they’re the boss’ kids,” Peter said as he took a seat. “Cute. Celia’s the nanny?”

“Mm,” Danni said, just as Neil rushed in, smoothing down his tie. 

“Sorry guys,” he said. “It’s Saturday morning, I just couldn’t find anyone this early. I’m here for this and then I have to go, I’m afraid. It’s just not a normal station, I can’t have them around photos of dead bodies and bloodied knives and the like.”

“That’s okay Neil,” Ellen assured him. “That’s what you have a team of all of these amazing Detectives for, and I’m sure they all have your mobile phone number.”

“They do. Hopefully we don’t get anything too extreme coming in this weekend. Now…Danni tells me that you think you’ve identified a person of interest, Peter?”

“Yep,” Peter said with a nod. “I remembered something yesterday.” He took a deep breath and glanced at Ellen, but she smiled at him. He saw pride still flickering in her eyes. Of course Dina sounded like a slightly bizarre choice given that Ellen had helped her, but if they took sanity out of the equation it remained plausible. Ellen had told Peter she was proud of him the previous night when she climbed into bed and wrapped herself up beside him. They had kissed and quietly made love, both happy to be moving forward. It felt easier having a name, even if it was the wrong name. 

“Dina Davis,” Peter continued. “Now Belinda Brady. She’s twenty-three years old, a Constable in the Special Response to Drug Crimes Task Force, Heroin Branch, under Inspector Reg Masters. The Smack Squad is the same branch that the Ferret tried to recruit myself, Danni and Ellen to, multiple times. He almost begged Ellen. Almost.”

“Danni said she was young, but twenty-three?” Neil asked with a disbelieving smirk. “You don’t think that’s too young to be on our radar? Ellen, she’s half your age.”

“I don’t think so!” Ellen teased back with a laugh. “Look, she was fifteen at the time I met her, and Danni and I both missed her in our assessment of my case history because she was a child, and she was the victim of a kidnapping that Missing Persons had asked for our assistance on. It was one of Angie’s first cases eight years ago.”

“I wasn’t there, obviously,” Danni said. “But Peter thought of it yesterday.”

“I don’t know why exactly,” Peter said. “I just got this feeling of déjà vu listening to Kiera talking, watching her on the screen talking about this person called D…and this old case came to mind. It is the source of that bad, déjà vu feeling I still have today.”

“The case was resolved, obviously?” Neil asked. 

“Yes, here’s the file number,” Danni said as she handed him a scrap of paper so that he could locate the digital record on his computer. At the same time Ellen opened her briefcase and retrieved the paper file. She explained that Peter had borrowed it overnight, woops, while Neil did his best to glare and look displeased. He read quickly and quietly, while they sat and waited for him to grasp the basic history.

“Angie had gotten close to our target,” Ellen explained. “She was wired, and when left alone for a time she conducted a search of the house she had been taken to. She found the girl, Dina, in the basement. The target, uh, Greg, uh, Waterhouse? I think?”

“Waterston,” Peter corrected.

“Right, Waterston then followed Angie into the basement and cornered both women. Angie alerted us over the wire, we were close enough to pick up that transmission, and Peter called for backup while I approached. The basement door was shut, I could hear Dina pleading inside while Angie’s muffled voice told me that she was trying to talk to Greg; at that stage they were all alive. As Dina became more hysterical and once I was joined by Peter, we broke the door down. I entered first, he made a grab for Dina to use her as a shield, and I shot him in the head. He died instantly.”

“You remember that?” Neil asked. 

“Don’t look so surprised,” Ellen replied with a smirk as she crossed her arms. “I remember the people I’ve killed, and there haven’t been many. I certainly remember what it looks like when you shoot someone in the face at close range. If Dina was hysterical before I fired, she was deeply traumatised in the aftermath. I believe all of us were in varying states of shock. I had to appear before an inquiry that confirmed the shooting was justified given the high likelihood that Greg would have had a weapon of some kind…though it was proved that he did not. We got told off for being a bit reckless, but it was Angie’s first big case and Missing Persons cases are always high stakes, very quick, very little time to plan or second-guess. It was a clean shoot and good result. At least, I always thought it was a good result.”

“Which is why you didn’t pick up on it, reading the files in this last week or two?”

“Correct. I had read these case notes twice before last night. They seemed in order.”

“But Peter isn’t sure? Peter, what makes you think this kid is it?”

“Well she’s changed her name and become a cop, for one,” Peter began. “That’s not unusual if you’re trying to distance yourself from something in your past that might follow you otherwise; as Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie beside me knows very well, because she’s changed her name in her youth too. Whoever D is, she knows this about Mac, because it was part of the advertisement that Kiera published online. Kristine Callum, remember? It could be that Dina feels some kind of closeness or connection to Ellen, we’re just not sure what form that takes.”

“She’s also applied to the Covert Services selection process twice in the last two years,” Danni said. “She’s failed both times because she’s only been out of the Academy two years as well, and even Angie and Cam both had five years’ experience before they were selected.”

“You can’t just walk in with a badge and become an undercover operative,” Ellen added. “But I never met Dina, or Belinda as she is known, as part of that process. I’ve never been on the review panel for the wider selection process, and if officers didn’t make it into the merit pool, then I didn’t meet them or interview them.”

“So you’ve never directly rejected her.”

“No,” Ellen said. “Covert Services has, though. That may be why she bears a grudge against undercover more broadly, in addition to whatever she has in mind for me.”

“And because she was fifteen,” Peter continued. “She probably also absorbed enough information about what was going on around her to understand, to get to know who Elle was and where she came from within the police system. Ellen tried to interview this teenager in the hours after the rescue, but was not very successful. Therefore, Ellen’s report on Dina in the aftermath is…lacking the finer details that could otherwise have given us an insight into her personality.”

“Oh, that’s nicer than how you put it last night over dinner!” Ellen said with a snort and a laugh. “Half-assed, I think you said?”

Peter blushed as Neil chuckled, while Ellen smirked and raised her eyebrows. 

“Well, I know your work Elle, it wasn’t your finest.”

“I’d just shot a man’s face half-off. Dina had brain matter on her. We did our best.”

“Well…yes, that’s true.”

“What did you perceive of her?” Neil asked Ellen directly. “What do you remember?”

“I remember a very scared fifteen year old girl who refused to talk. She was very angry, she insulted both myself and the other policewomen who had been called in to assist. My impression was that she was in shock, deeply hurt by her experiences; one minute she would begin sobbing and would beg me not to leave her, the next she would be spitting in my face calling me a whore. We ordered a psych evaluation and gave her family information about counselling that we very strongly recommended.”

“Mm, yes I can see all of that here,” Neil said as he read the file more thoroughly. “Why does Peter feel that this is a half-assed report? It looks okay to me.”

“He knows me better than you,” Ellen said with a telling but reserved smile. “It is complete to professional standards, but from my own perspective it is incomplete, in a sense.” She hesitated, licked her lips and sat back in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest. “Um…I remember this case because of the shooting, because I felt responsible for Angie – who was still so young and new to the job – and I was pleased that my operative and the victim had not been seriously hurt. Peter showed me a photograph of the girl that’s on file last night, the one you’re probably looking at-”

“The school photograph provided by her family the day after she disappeared.”

“Yes, and the one taken afterwards. I…Look, the truth is she reminded me of my brother.” She got the words out as quickly as she could and briefly looked skyward. She hadn’t told any of them that yet, and she felt all three pairs of eyes on her. 

“What?” Danni asked softly. 

“You have a brother?” Neil asked. 

“Uh, sort of,” Ellen said as she glanced at Peter. She saw a sad degree of understanding in his eyes. She might not have told him that, but he had guessed. She turned back to Neil to speak. “I’m adopted,” she told him. “I was adopted as a baby, and my brother was adopted several years later as a little boy, named Michael Callum. He is currently serving time for rape. It’s his third conviction for rape over his lifetime…but he has committed other crimes for which he was never charged.”

“Oh Ellen, I’m sorry,” Neil said with a frown. “I didn’t know.”

“I changed my name to the name my biological mother gave me at birth, Ellen, and added Mackenzie when I left home and moved interstate for university. I left Sydney because Michael terrified me for the majority of my childhood and my parents were complicit in doing nothing about his strange, cold temperament. You know how kids sometimes sneak up on each other and shout boo for a laugh? Michael did that to me, but it never looked like he was having innocent fun. In his eyes, it was always a more serious kind of stimulation…he never touched me, and in the end I protected him for a while because he was my brother and because my parents wanted it to be that way, but I knew what he was capable of and he and I don’t have a relationship anymore. My parents still don’t love me as much as they love him…it’s a very strange family.”

“You did tell me part of that just after you got out of hospital, Ellen,” Neil said gently. “But not about your brother. You’ve been here in Melbourne since leaving them?”

“Yes,” she said with a small smile. “And I’m not saying that Dina was exactly the same as Michael…but I found her unsettling. She seemed unsettled within herself, I’ve seen a lot of traumatised people and I’m still not sure that can fully explain what she was like that afternoon. When she called me a bitch and a whore, she was looking me directly in the eyes, and I felt like she really meant it. There was a coldness there beneath what looked to everyone else like hysteria. She let me see it…I buried that memory, but I haven’t forgotten it.”

“It still didn’t occur to you when you read that old file the other day?”

“No, because she was a fifteen year old girl in that file and the victim. I didn’t wrong her, she didn’t threaten me. I’ve been called a lot worse.”

“And yet Peter remembered?”

“I’m not a complete numb-nuts!” Peter insisted as Danni chuckled into her hands at the tone of Neil’s question.

“Peter’s highly intelligent,” Ellen said as she reached over and patted his knee. “And I’m not just saying that because I’m marrying him. He can’t list all of the country’s Prime Ministers but he does have a memory for the unit’s caseload, for the psychos and different personalities we’ve all encountered, that is unmatched by any of us.”

“I think it’s called ‘people skills’,” Peter stated proudly. 

“He was there that day too,” Ellen explained. “He saw me shoot Waterston, he saw Angie take Dina outside, he met Dina and helped pick brain out of her hair until the ambulance arrived, and he saw me struggle with the shooting in the aftermath. I couldn’t sleep, I’d killed a man, and we’d all been worried about the fate of this girl…ultimately I was relieved, however. I’ve not given Dina a moment of my time or energy in eight years, but if she’s a police officer now, if she’s applied for Covert Services and she’s now working with Reg – a man who knows me and knows my old unit very well – then she is a viable suspect and worthy of further investigation.”

“I rang Ange to chat to her before taking this to Ellen and Danni as well,” Peter said. “My memory is mostly tied to the shooting, to the sound of Ellen firing that gun and then to being with Elle afterwards. There was a scared sort of look I remember in her eyes that night – and sorry Elle, but there was – and it’s the same look she gets when she has to talk about Michael. But I knew Angie would remember everything from a different angle? Angie remembers how hysterical Dina was, and the sight of what happened in that basement…but she did mention that if we are looking for a young policewoman, one of the advantages she would have would be to blend in with girls about Kiera’s age, and they might be more comfortable with her approaching them, or chatting to them without a uniform on…or even in the uniform, because they recognize that she’s barely older than they are, and they talk to her like a peer.”

“More likely to confide in her, you mean?”

“Perhaps, or more likely to trust her. I think the words Ange used was that a young cop who was skilled at manipulation would have a lot of power over girls like Kiera.”

“Mm…I’d have to say that I agree,” Neil said. He stared at Peter again. “It just came to you, eh Church?”

“I’ve been a cop for twenty-six years, Neil,” Peter said. “You’d be surprised at the spooky, bloody, personality-of-freaking-psychos bullshit that just comes to me sometimes. If this time it has a use beyond reminding me to check the locks on my doors and windows seven times before bed, if I sleep at all, then you beauty!”

“We wanted to talk about how you feel we should proceed,” Danni said to her boss. “There are two options, the Homicide option, or the Undercover option.”

“Oh dear,” Neil said with a grimace. “What does that mean?”

“We can talk to her directly,” Danni said. “But we’ve discussed it and we don’t think we have enough evidence. It’s all circumstantial and she would just laugh at us…and then we’ve lost our advantage. We would like to take a more indirect approach.”

“Liiiiike?” Neil asked. 

“Like talking to Reg,” Ellen said. “I’ve coordinated jobs with Reg when he was in Vice and in Drug Squad, we go back seven or eight years. I want to ask him about her. I think he’ll be honest with me, and if he still has a big mouth and goes back to the office and says to Belinda, ‘I had Ellen Mackenzie asking questions about you today, what’s going on?’ then that tips her off…but she gets to hold onto her power. It allows her to think that we don’t know that she knows. If she’s clever enough to work that out, well then we have ourselves a game…she might even enjoy it and fuck up.”

“You’re going to use Inspector Masters to feed down your suspicion to Belinda?”

“I thought it was clever,” Ellen said with a simple shrug. “And it’ll work, because Reg is, well…”

“A bit of a sucker,” Peter concluded on her behalf. “And he loves to humble-brag.”

“Yes, thank you Peter,” Ellen said on a laugh as he grinned. 

“You’re welcome honey,” he replied as he cutely patted her shoulder. Danni laughed. 

“In the meantime,” Ellen continued. “We’ll also keep an eye on her movements, and start discreetly working through her own history. We might talk to a few people.”

“Again, to informally tip her off,” Neil stated.

“It’s better than the online variation of this,” Danni said. “Where we plaster Ellen’s information online again for all to see. If we can stay right off the net now and narrow our focus to this girl, if she proves to be as decent a lead as we all feel she could be, then Ellen might not have to deal with the long-term security repercussions of another online baiting project…if we can prove it, if we can identify the male accomplice.”

“Okay, do it,” Neil said. “Be careful, and Ellen, use your judgement in how much you share with Reg. Remember, without any direct evidence that Belinda is D, she remains only a person of interest. Remember that she has an accomplice, and make sure that none of you are alone with her at any time, am I understood?”

“Yes Inspector,” Danni said with a nod. 

*

“That went well,” Peter declared as he stepped into the elevator with Ellen. Danni had remained to talk to Charlotte and Max while Neil packed up their things. 

“I think so,” Ellen agreed as she stood beside him and the doors closed. She turned to look at him and smiled more broadly once they were alone. “And half-assed my backside. There’s nothing wrong with my report, it’s professional and I kept my emotional response to the case right out of it. It’s my eyes and our conversation after I had that nightmare in the motel room that you remembered, and maybe the way she insulted me, and that was reflected verbatim in my report, because it was fine.”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “But I couldn’t sit there and say it was all about a look, Elle. I think you’re brilliant, you know that.”

“Yeah, yeah, details!” she said in a playful huff. She looked sideways at him and grinned to let him know that she was only teasing. In truth, she had forgotten a lot of those feelings around the case that she’d experienced and buried at the time. Peter hadn’t. “Do you remember everything about our time together back then?” she asked. 

“Yeah I do,” he said honestly. “I know it was new and casual and we said no strings and we followed the rules, but that night was the first night I lay with you in my arms and I felt like we…like we’d probably just made love without calling it that. It was the first night I knew I had deeper feelings, and I thought you had feelings for me.”

“I did, I do. I remember having to almost seduce you that night, though. You thought I was vulnerable and got all macho…but you caved and it became something else.”

“I know,” he said softly. “I’m just saying…that’s part of why I remember the case, because that night is tied to Dina and the shooting and her rescue and how upset you were by it…and now if she’s the one who is upsetting us both all over again…Fuck.”

“I know,” Ellen said on a sigh. She reached for his hand and gripped it tightly. “You’re a good man, and if you’ve cracked this case for us…no matter what happens I am so proud of you, and you’re an excellent police officer. Always believe that.”

“Elle, please, not now-”

“You have to let me say these things. We have a suspect now and that’s great, I feel lighter in a way, but this makes the danger more tangible. There could be eight years of pent up anger or obsession or love or whatever in this girl. Eight years of desire.”

“We’ll get her,” Peter said. “It might take time, but we will get her and her disgusting accomplice, and you will be safe. We’ll both be safe. And then we can get a house and a dog and figure out a new life together away from this place. I promise Ellen.”   
He thought of Alice and Christina, the way they were both gunned down, twenty and seven years ago respectively. The promises he had made to them were lost. He never had a chance to try to prevent their deaths, but this time he did, with the woman he had known longer than he had known Alice and Christina, combined. His mate, Mac. 

“I know my plans like this have fallen through before,” he said. “But not this time.”

“It’s okay Peter,” Ellen said softly when she heard his voice crack. They were nearly at their floor. “They’re our plans, remember, and this is our life. I talk like I’m leaving but that’s just in case, it’s my Plan F. I’ll never leave, and I’m not backing down.”

“Then let’s trap the bitch,” Peter mumbled as he let go of Ellen’s hand and the elevator doors opened. They were on one of the floors that housed the city branches of the Special Response to Drug Crimes Taskforce. Peter never thought he would set foot there; this Taskforce was the reason their unit had been disbanded and Ellen wasn’t the only one dreaming of a police-free life. Yet no one looking at them would know that as they plastered professional and interested expressions on their faces and stepped out of the elevator as one, just as Reg Masters came out of his office. 

“Well, I can’t believe it, Ellen Mackenzie here at last!” he exclaimed in a voice loud enough to alert the entire floor to her presence. Ellen smirked and glanced sideways at Peter. If Belinda was there at her desk, if she was D, she would be D for delighted.


	26. Chapter 26

TWENTY-SIX

Danni had claimed the privacy of Neil’s office for herself as she set up her laptop and initiated the video call that she had arranged as soon as Neil had left with Charlotte and Max. Jessica had answered her mobile phone quickly, having saved Danni’s private number in her contacts list, and half an hour later it was almost time to call again. Danni had asked her to speak face-to-face; it was just easier for her to speak to Jessica if she could see her facial expressions and body language as well as listening to her verbal responses. 

When the connection was made, Jessica was sitting at a dining room table and she waved shyly at the screen. Her blonde hair was tucked behind her ears and brushed straight, but she was dressed in pyjamas still, clearly having a lazy Saturday morning.

“Hi Detective Mayo,” she said. “Can you hear me okay?”

“I can,” Danni said with a smile. “Me?”

“Yes, you’re fine. My aunt’s gone down the road to the shops so we can speak privately…I just didn’t want her listening or trying to butt in. They’re not totally happy with me for not coming forward sooner, and I’ve been really worried about my senior exams. I really have been begging to come back already. Please tell me you’ve caught who did this?”

“We are getting closer, I hope,” Danni said. “I wanted to ask you some more questions, if that’s okay?”

“Anything I can do to help. It doesn’t matter that I’m, like, seventeen still? Do I need to have my aunt here for this?”

“Not if you don’t want,” Danni said. “Honestly, if I piss you off just tell me and hang up on me.”

Jessica laughed and shook her head. 

“If you say so,” she said. “I won’t hold it against you. What do you need? Was the laptop any help?”

“Oh Jess, it was a huge help!” Danni assured her with a big grin. “Kiera had saved a lot of video recordings and internet transcripts on there for us to find. We know much more about what sort of person she was, and how she was feeling in the weeks leading up to her death. Thank you for bringing it in. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. She um, she wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to get hurt.”

“I need to ask you,” Danni continued. “Did you know that Kiera wrote Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie a letter in the days before she died?”

“A letter? No. But I think she was trying to find a way to get out…I mean, she didn’t give me the details, because I kept nagging her to do something about it, to go to the police or at least to keep a detailed record – I guess that was on the laptop after all – but she said to me that she felt like she had gotten to know the cop she was following, Ellen, and she felt like Ellen was probably trustworthy and a good person. When Ellen came to the high school and she didn’t say much at first, I could still see it in her eyes, what Kiera saw…if Kiera wrote her a letter then I’m sure it was to tip her off and to say sorry, because Kiera was scared that someone was going to kill this cop, because of something she got trapped into doing.”

“You never read it or knew it existed?”

“No,” Jessica said as she shook her head. “Did Ellen ever get it?”

“We have it now. It was waylaid for a time,” Danni said vaguely. “Kiera probably left it too late to ask us for help, but the thought was there.”

“She was a good person, Danni. Can I call you Danni? This isn’t like an official interview or anything, right?”

“Danni’s fine,” Danni said with a chuckle, but she quickly grew serious. “Now Jess, I want to talk to you about D. Is that okay?”

“Yes,” Jessica said. “If I get upset I’ll tell you…but I really don’t know much.”

“Tell me what you do know about this woman again?”

“Well, Kiera called her D and said she was a policewoman who had found out that Kiera bought pot from her dealer for her mum. D was threatening Kiera with charges and possible jail time – I think the dealer as well, who Kiera was friends with – unless Kiera helped by following this police officer called Ellen Mackenzie, and then putting together some video footage and putting a notice online to help people find her…it’s like D used Kiera to indirectly order a hit on Ellen, that’s the best way I’ve thought of to describe it. She’s still okay, right? Is she safe?”

“Yes, she’s fine,” Danni said with a reassuring smile. “Did Kiera ever describe her?”

“Oh, um…not really.”

“Did she ever say anything about her appearance? For example, was she short, tall, old, busty, quite beautiful, tattooed, any of the above?” 

Jessica shut her eyes and took a few deep breaths as she thought. Her brow was furrowed and her lips pursed. 

“Um…I’m just trying to remember what Kiera might have said, throwaway lines.”

“Take your time, hon. You’re doing great.”

“There is a conversation I remember,” she said after a minute. “It was one night, Kiera was at my house doing schoolwork online on her laptop, because that was what it was really meant to be used for. But we were talking about other stuff, as you do when you’re with your friends and you’re meant to be studying. Um…Kiera said – out of the blue – ‘I don’t think she’s a mum’. I asked who she was talking about, and she said, ‘Ellen’. She said she never saw Ellen with kids, her house was big but it was probably just her living there alone, and she was hardly ever there, and I think she had seen Ellen meeting a man for a date, so she had concluded that Ellen wasn’t a mum.”

“What’s the relevance of that?” Danni asked curiously.

“Well that’s what I said,” Jessica said as she looked into Danni’s eyes on the screen. “I asked, ‘Does that matter? Is it worse if a mum with lots of kids gets murdered, compared to if a Detective Senior Sergeant with no kids gets murdered? What about all the good she does, and is that less good than raising kids? Does it make it better that she’s killed?’ And Kiera had to think about that before she agreed with me that no, it doesn’t make it better…but it was something that I think she used to make herself feel better about what she was doing. I think it made it easier for her to cope.”

“I see,” Danni said calmly. “Go on.”

“Well I kept on at her a bit…it’s just me and dad, you know? Mum ran off…I get kind of pissed off when people suggest that being a mum is the be-all and end-all of a woman’s life. I hate when people act like being a mum makes that woman somehow better than all the others who don’t have kids…it shits me off so bad, cos my mum treated us like crap. Even Kiera didn’t really get it, she and her mum were so close.”

“I understand,” Danni said as she thought of Ellen and her own adopted mother. “Not all mums live up to even the lowest expectations.”

“It doesn’t automatically make someone a better person,” Jessica agreed. “That’s what I told Kiera. I turned the question back around on her and I said, ‘What about this policewoman making you do these things? Is she a mum? Does she have kids? Does it make what she’s doing to you and this other cop any better?’ Kiera couldn’t answer the last bit, she was upset by then because I went a bit angry…but she did say…let me sure I get this right. She said, ‘I don’t think D’s a mum, she’s a bit too young.’”

“A bit too young?” Danni asked. “Are you sure that’s what she said?”

“Yes…but I don’t know what it means,” Jessica replied. “A bit too young could be like your average twelve year old, you know, if it’s taken literally? But Kiera wasn’t the most intelligent girl – it’s awful to say about my friend but it’s true…she wouldn’t be thinking literally like that. She just used to say stuff that came to mind.”

“Did you ask how young or old D was?”

“I think I did, but Kiera brushed me off. She wouldn’t know anyway.”

“But she definitely said that she felt D was too young to have children, and she gave off the vibe that Ellen was a more appropriate age for that to be a concern?”

“Yep. Is that important?” Jessica asked. 

“Yeah, possibly Jess,” Danni said. “What I might need to do, is after our chat today I’m going to call your local police station down there, and I’m going to email them a copy of parts of our discussion, and I’m going to get you to sign it in the presence of your aunt. Would that be okay?”

“Sure, like an update to my police statement, cos I left stuff out last time?”

“Yeah, a bit like that,” Danni said with a smile. “That okay?”

“If it helps, yeah of course. Also on D’s appearance…I’m not as sure about this as I am with the rest, but I think Kiera once called her a freckly little bitch. I wouldn’t have asked any more, I think I just laughed because we were making a joke of it.”

“A freckly little bitch?”

“Ahuh. I’m…eighty-five percent sure it really happened. The discussion about the kids though, I’m one hundred percent sure it happened exactly as I said, because trust me, people start going ga-ga over mothers and I get pissed off and I remember.”

“Got it,” Danni said with a gentle chuckle. “Anything else?”

“Not that I can remember right now, but I’ll keep thinking and when the police come for me to sign, I can add stuff if I remember it, or call you right away.”

“That would be really good, thanks,” Danni said. “Another question before you go…you never met D?”

“God no!” Jessica said with wide eyes. “No way, Jose!”

“Did you and Kiera usually walk to your house after school?”

“Yep. And sometimes in the morning she would come by on her way and we’d walk together…except she stopped doing that so much when she started following Ellen, because she was always busy.”

“Have you ever been approached by anyone, with Kiera or on your own, claiming to be a police officer? Either in uniform or in plain clothes?”

“No,” Jessica said seriously, her voice soft and eyes wide.

“You’ve never seen a police officer watching you?”

“No…well not that I know of. I guess if they’re not in uniform, they’d just look like an ordinary person.”

“Has any woman approached you or your friends in the last six months?” Danni asked. “Any woman hanging around? And when I say woman, I don’t mean someone who looks thirty-six like me, I mean someone who could tell you they’re a uni student, and you’d believe them.”

“I’d believe you if you said you went to uni, Danni,” Jessica quipped. Danni laughed and gestured for her to answer the question. “Um,” Jessica continued thoughtfully. “In the last six months…at the start of the year, in March I think, Kiera and me and Darcy and a group of girls, we went to a party that had uni students there. They’d just started classes. We talked to some about what uni was like. We weren’t drinking or anything, but it was pretty cool we got invited. We all dressed up, it was fun.”

“You were invited?” Danni asked. “By who?”

“I dunno, some girl was talking to Kiera at the checkout one day when she was at work, and she asked if Kiera was in uni and Kiera said no, year twelve. She got handed this flyer and said that Kiera should come and bring some of her friends. We were pretty nervous but we thought, why not right? We made a pact to stick together and if we didn’t like it we would leave.”

“Did you meet up with that girl again at the party, do you remember?”

“Um, yeah I think so,” Jessica said. She smiled and added, “I think she came up to us to say hello, or she recognised Kiera or something, I don’t know.”

“Do you remember what she looked like, Jess?” Danni asked curiously and carefully. She didn’t want to scare Jessica, but Jessica was a clever young lady and she flinched and sat back in her chair. 

“Why?” she asked.

“We’re just trying to get an idea about whether any young women have shown an interest in Kiera in the last six months or so. An interest in Kiera, or any of you younger girls.”

“You think…you think that was her?” Jessica asked. Her eyes filled with tears. “Really?”

“It might not be,” Danni assured her. “It’s okay Jessica, it might not be. I just need you to describe her to me, just do your best.”

“Um, okay,” Jessica said. She wiped her flushed face and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes again. “Um, this girl, she was…she was wearing a mini-skirt and boots, I remember Kiera commenting on her boots, like she said, ‘cool boots!’…she had a thing for boots, loved them. And um…this other girl was white. She had straight hair, but I don’t know if it was really straight because it had obviously been straightened as well, like around her face it was dead straight. So it might be curly, I don’t know.”

“That’s great Jess, what else?”

“Um…b-b-brown hair, but…much lighter than Ellen’s hair. Not blonde like yours.”

“A light brown colour?”

“Yeah um, yeah I can’t think of how else to describe it. Kind of boring? Just a plain light brown colour. Um…she looked cute though, I mean, she was dressed cute and she had a good figure – much better than mine, I felt really fat and short that night even though I’d tried to look nice – and I was a bit jealous of how much attention some of my friends were giving to the uni students, they were all cool, apparently.”

“Do you remember this girl’s eye colour?”

“Um…brown I think. Nothing special. She was very white though. Like, she was dressed mostly all in black and it made her skin look really white, I remember that.”

“Remember her name?”

“Um…Crap, I don’t know,” she said. She covered her face with her hands and leant forward on the table to groan. “Um…I don’t remember but my friends might. I could message them?” She picked up the mobile phone beside her and held it up. 

“Okay, please do,” Danni said. “Just say, ‘Hey guys, do you remember the name of that uni student who invited Kiera and us to that party earlier in the year? We chatted to her at the party too. Any idea?’ That’s it, don’t say any more than that please Jess.”

“If one of them says yes, are you going to go and talk to them?” Jessica asked as she typed the message just as Danni had asked. “Okay, I sent it.”

“Thank you,” Danni replied. “This is really helpful Jess. Thank you.”

“Sorry I didn’t tell you all this the other day.”

“That’s okay, sometimes these things take a few days to settle in, and sometimes you don’t know what’s important right away. I didn’t know what questions were the right ones to ask a few days ago, that’s how quickly things like this can change.”

“Do you think it could be her?” Jessica asked. “This woman…I mean…Kiera never said it was her. She would tell me that, wouldn’t she? If I’d met her too?”

“She might have been trying to protect you, honey,” Danni said. “Then again this girl could be completely innocent, you just don’t know.”

“I know it’s probably pretty rare for uni students to invite high school kids to a party,” Jessica said glumly. She bit her bottom lip and added, “I should have seen through that, right? Most uni students would think we were totally lame. I should have known it was suss. I had a bit of a ‘that’s weird’ feeling, I was worried it was a practical joke or that we’d be laughed at, but we went anyway and that didn’t happen, we just got treated like normal.”

“Do you remember how many people were there?” Danni asked, just as Jessica’s phone beeped twice; two consecutive messages. 

“Um, it’s hard to know how many people. Maybe fifty or a hundred? It was at a house overlooking one of the canals, you know one of those party homes you can hire out. There were guys there as well, lots of different uni students. We made a ‘no guys’ rule before we went, we all shook on it, because you know…we were pretty worried about date rape or what these uni students would be like, but they were nice enough.”

“Messages?” Danni asked as Jessica stopped talking to look at her phone.

“Two of our four friends have answered,” she said. “Darcy Chisholm and Mary Xie. They were both at the party with us, and they’re in our group…Darcy wasn’t really friends with Kiera though. She’s the one that Ellen met at the school with me, she’s Aboriginal, and Mary’s parents are from China but she’s pretty much full Aussie too. Um…they both remember the name, it’s the same, they both say it’s the same name. That’s good, right?”

“Terrific!” Danni said with a smile. “What was the name of this girl who invited you all to the party?”

Jessica took a deep breath and looked into Danni’s eyes as she replied, “Belinda”.

*

Danni didn’t even care that Reg had followed Ellen and Peter back to Homicide an hour later. She emerged from Neil’s office, shouted, “Mac!” for everyone around her to hear, and almost barreled into her stunned friend for a tight hug. 

“Oh my God, Danni,” Ellen managed to choke out as she returned the embrace. She was aware of Peter and Reg standing just behind her. “What is it?” she asked. 

Danni met Peter’s eyes briefly over Ellen’s shoulder before she pulled away and took a step back. Her heart was hammering in her chest, she could not stop grinning. 

“I’ve just sent a statement to police in Tasmania, they’re taking it to Jessica to sign-”

“You spoke to Jess again?” Ellen asked. 

“Yeah well if Ange thinks it’s easier for a younger woman to hang around schoolkids, I thought I’d put that to Jess, see if she remembered anyone who wasn’t obviously a cop, like she knew D to be, like maybe friendly uni students or girls at the shops.”

“That’s a great idea, Danni.”

“Yeah, well, it worked!” Danni exclaimed. “I’ve sent Barry and Hayden on an urgent mission to track down two more of Kiera and Jess’ friends because I had to type this up for Jess and send it right away, so the cops could get to her as well…I want this sewn up tonight and I want to make sure those two other girls are safe, we must locate them. Actually, there are four other girls, Jess gave me all their names and numbers and Barry and Hayden are going to talk to all of them.”

“About what, exactly?” Peter asked. “You’re shaking, Danni! What’s going on?”

“We have her,” Danni said with a hopeful grin. “I think we have her. It’s Belinda.”


	27. Chapter 27

TWENTY-SEVEN

Three Weeks Later

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Danni asked as she stood in the doorway to her bedroom and watched Angie helping to attach a silver necklace around Ellen’s otherwise bare neck. Danni hardly recognised her from behind.

Just two days earlier Ellen had her hair cut without telling any of them her plans. It was as short as it had been the year Danni had started working with them all, five years ago. Yet Danni had to admit that the style suited Ellen; she had high cheekbones and she could carry more than a simple bob. Shorter strands of chocolate brown hair still fell softly around her creamy olive face, not quite long enough to be tucked behind her ears. The back was neatly blow-dried and though her neck literally was bare but for the necklace Angie had leant her, from behind she looked simply beautiful and elegant.

Danni never imagined that one day Ellen would get married. In a white dress, no less. It was a short, strapless dress with a pencil skirt to just below the knee, similar to the pink dress she had worn to Angie’s own wedding not that long ago. In fact, Danni suspected that Ellen had deliberately looked for a white version. Wrapped around her shoulders already was a royal blue shawl that matched the deep blue colour of her eyes, and just about finished off the something borrowed, something blue traditions.

“It’s very exposed,” Danni added as her mind drifted nearer to the ocean they would soon be standing alongside. She was in a shorter dress too, catering to the rising tide.

“Yes, I’m sure, I’m ready,” Ellen said as she turned and presented herself to them with a nervous smile. She flopped her arms out by her sides while the shawl stayed balanced on her shoulders. “Well?” she asked. “How do I look?”

“Beautiful,” Angie assured her with a grin. “Nervous? I was freaking out at this point.”

“I can’t believe you’re both getting married within six months of each other,” Danni said as she crossed her arms over the bodice of her dark green dress. “Actually, not just two of you, but four of you. We might have had a really terrific solve rate as a unit, but we’re not a very good advertisement for the no fraternization policy.”

“Not at all!” Angie said with a laugh. “Although to be fair, Cam and I didn’t fraternize at all while we worked together, not until we knew for sure that the unit was disbanding and Cam was leaving, and Mac and Pete had one year, then nothing-”

“We didn’t have sex again until we were in the Northern Territory,” Ellen informed them. Danni laughed at the plain but humourous expression on her friend’s face. 

“Thanks for the update,” Angie replied with a smirk. 

“Oh, you’re welcome,” Ellen replied with a wise nod. “Thank you for the necklace.”

“It was Shirley’s,” Angie explained. “She gave it to me as a wedding gift, like passing something onto a daughter, you know? So it’s very old and very, very borrowed.”

“You will get it back,” Ellen assured her as she touched the teardrop silver and pearl pendant. “Well are we ready? Should we go?”

“Mm,” Danni said as she checked her mobile phone for the hundredth time in the last hour. The latest message from Cameron said that he and Peter were on their way. “Yeah, let’s not waste any time.”

“Relax, Danni,” Ellen said with a broad, excited smile, as Angie dashed out of the room to go to the toilet one last time before they left. Ellen’s blue eyes gleamed as she continued, “I don’t care if Belinda has dodged us, she’s gone and I’m getting married today. It hasn’t been announced, no one but the half a dozen people invited know it’s happening, but I feel so ridiculously calm right now. Everything will be fine.”

“You look calm,” Danni assured her with a kind smile as she ordered herself to chill. “You look radiant, Elle.”

“Thanks,” Ellen said with a grin. “And we’ll find Belinda, you realise. There’s a warrant out for her arrest. Both her names and her photograph is out there for the world to see…which is what I call karma, frankly.”

Danni laughed loudly and nodded. That was very true, and it had occurred to her. 

“And you almost look like a different woman,” she said as she put her hands on her hips, still clutching her phone. “Excited?”

“Yeah I am,” Ellen said on a whisper as tears filled her eyes. She looked upwards in an attempt not to cry. “Oh God, Danni, do you have tissues?”

“In my bag,” Danni assured her. “I’ll have a couple in hand if you need them.”

“Thank you. I might cry.”

“That is okay.” 

“I fear that it’s not surprising anymore,” Ellen said with a wry, self-deprecating laugh. “Can I still get away with blaming my thirty-seven year old hormones?”

“You’ve been off the Pill for about a month, right? Yes, yes you can.”

“You’re what?” Angie asked as she returned and gaped at Ellen. “You’re off it?”

“Yeah,” Ellen said with a wary smile and a furrowed brow. “I just, well…look, it’s not important today. I have to go and get married! I refuse to be late.”

“Okay, okay, we’re leaving right now,” Danni assured them. She started gesturing for them both to leave the bedroom. “To the car, troops!” she declared. “Remember to pick up your bags on the way out. Detective Mayo has the tissues!”

*

Peter stood on the beach in bare feet, three quarter cream pants and a white short-sleeved, button-down shirt. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. He was standing beside Cameron and their male celebrant, a kind, down-to-earth man in his forties called Tim with white hair and a white beard. Both men were similarly dressed in neat but fairly casual clothes. Also nearby was Neil, as well as Ellen’s biological mother Eve and half-sister Amy. Eve, dressed all in black, had her professional camera out and had already taken a lot of photographs, before Ellen had even arrived. 

It was nearing ten o’clock on a mid-spring Saturday morning, the sky was blue and clear but for a few wispy white clouds and hot air balloons drifting across the city skyline. The beach was fairly busy on such a nice day, and a few people had already figured out that a wedding was due to occur. They were hanging around on the grassy hill nearby or loitering on the footpath, all hoping for a glimpse of the bride. 

As was Peter.

“Oh, is this them?” Cameron asked in Peter’s ear a minute later, when three female figures appeared on the footpath from the direction of the car park. Peter turned his head to try to catch a glimpse of Ellen. He would be able to pick her easily; he had been there when she bought her dress and shawl, and he had spent the past two nights in her arms learning that fresh new haircut with his fingers while kissing her neck. 

“Oh Christ, it is them,” he said on a jittery inhalation when he saw the familiar royal blue of the shawl wrapped around Ellen’s shoulders and upper arms and back. Angie was beside her in a loose, pale-coloured dress and Danni was behind wearing a darker colour, no doubt on high alert as she brought up the rear of the procession. It was out of order, in a way, but Peter knew there was good reason. Danni was the only woman armed, she was Ellen’s bodyguard. Beside him, Cameron was armed, as was Neil. 

Just like Cameron and Angie’s wedding, there was no music, but instead of the sounds of the bush they were surrounded by the sounds of the bay. Ellen grinned and bit her bottom lip as she met Peter’s glistening eyes once she was stopped on the footpath directly in front of him, but still several metres away. 

Angie slid out of her sandals first and stepped down from the raised footpath onto the sand. She then supported Ellen with a hand while Ellen leant over to remove her own shoes. Angie collected them in the same fingertips that held her own delicate sandals. Danni put a hand to Ellen’s back as Angie used her free hand to make sure that Ellen stepped easily onto the sand in bare feet. Danni quickly followed and remained at Ellen’s back as they walked forwards. 

A few people watching on clapped and whistled, but neither Ellen, Angie, nor Danni said a word. Ellen could hear herself breathing. She was starting to feel less calm. 

“Thanks for giving me away Angie,” she mumbled as they were halfway across the soft, uneven sand. Angie had slung her arm through Ellen’s to help keep her balanced.

“Freaking out yet?” Angie asked as she chuckled softly. “Just focus on how much he loves you…we’ve only been in town a day and you were hiding it last time I saw you both, but wow, I saw it yesterday. You’ve been together ten years, and today is just another day, the start of just another year.”

“Thanks,” Ellen hissed as they got within just a metre of the group of six. “Fuck.”

Angie chuckled and turned to look over her shoulder at Danni as they slowed. Danni grinned at her, before looking over her own shoulder at the dozen or so members of the public who were no longer trying to hide the fact that they were watching. That was one of the amazing elements of an outdoor public wedding, of course, that sense of sharing the moment with random passersby, but with Belinda on the run and the male accomplice as yet unidentified, Danni was definitely not feeling amazed. She was feeling the weight of the pistol strapped tightly around her thigh.

Peter didn’t care about any of that, though. His eyes welled with tears as he held out a hand and Ellen slipped her hand into his. She was shaking, he felt his breath shudder in response. He rubbed his thumb across the top of her hand as she positioned herself beside him. There was a light breeze that ruffled the ends of her wrap, and Peter smiled gladly as his free hand lifted to trace the outline of her face, from her temples to her cheeks to her jaw. Her lips were pressed together in a tight, emotional smile and her eyes filled with tears at his tender touch. She took a deep, steadying breath. 

“Welcome everyone,” Tim said to their six guests. “Before we begin, we are right at the edge of the tidal line here, and it’s on the way in, so prepare to get your feet wet. Please do not put cameras on the sand.” Eve laughed but Tim added, “It’s happened, trust me…Now we are here today to celebrate the marriage of Ellen, and Peter. I first met them both one month ago, in the form of Peter, who bustled into my office to announce that he needed to get married, and he needed to do it as quickly as possible! So…here we are, a little more than a month later, and I could not be more pleased that Ellen and Peter have allowed me to be here to officiate today. My name is Tim, and again, welcome.”

Ellen grinned at Tim briefly as Amy clapped excitedly and Eve snapped a photograph of her. 

“Before the exchange of rings, Ellen and Peter have written their own unique vows. I invite Ellen to speak first.”

Ellen let out a breath and gripped both of Peter’s hands tightly as she looked into his clear, light blue eyes. There was already a tear trickling down his cheek, and she hadn’t said a word yet. Her lips trembled and her palms were sweating, but she only tightened her hold of his fingers. She was calm, she was strong, and she could do this.

“I love you Peter,” she said in a trembling but determined voice. She smiled. “There were so many years when I couldn’t say that, but now a day won’t go by without those three words being said in our home. You are my best friend. It unsettles me to think that but for some truly awful events in our past – things we might have wished to change, once – we may never have met. I will never wish for change now.” 

Another tear dribbled from Peter’s eye as he struggled to maintain his composure, and Ellen let go of one of his hands to brush it away. A tear of her own slid down her cheek, she tasted salt at her lips, but she ignored it and continued speaking surely. 

“From the moment our paths did cross over ten years ago, you have captivated me, challenged me, frustrated me, and improved me in ways no person has done before. Because of you I laugh, because of you I smile, because of you I dream about a life I never thought could be mine. I promise to be true to you, to support and encourage you, to challenge and frustrate you, and to be your family, your safe place, a warm embrace. I am so lucky to have you in my life, Peter Church. May we never part.”

Peter’s hand clasped the side of her face as he nodded and leant forward for a brief, pressing kiss. Ellen’s eyes fell shut at the touch of his lips and she struggled not to genuinely cry as they parted. He brushed the backs of his fingers across her damp cheeks and took a deep, salty breath. 

“We probably should have told each other what we were going to say to prevent these kinds of breakdowns,” he said, garnering a laugh from their friends and family. “Oh Mac,” he whispered as he looked deeply into her happy, settled eyes. “Ellen, Elle, you have never looked more beautiful than you do today. You are my best friend also, and I love you. I just love you.” He stopped when he saw Ellen start to cry and try to cover her face even though she was still smiling, and Danni leant forward with two tissues that Peter took and handed to her. “You okay?” he asked with a playful grin as she dabbed at her eyes and nodded, laughing. 

“Sorry,” she said. “Continue.”

Peter took the opportunity to wipe his fingers across his own eyes before going on. 

“I promise to be at your side always. Whether we’re together or apart, know that I am with you. I respect you, I support you, I cherish you. I will never take you for granted, I will never take our family for granted. From when we were both very young, you and I have always wished for a family that loved us unconditionally, we wanted it even when we felt like we didn’t deserve it. You and I, we found that family in our workplace, they’re standing around us today…but for me the centre of that world, my world, has always been you. Strong, intelligent Mac, soft and loving Elle. When life is easy, we will celebrate with joy. When it is hard, I will fight beside you. I promise to never betray the trust you have placed in me, or the love you have found with me. I am the lucky one, and I’m going to echo your ending and just say may we never part.”

“You’re welcome,” Ellen whispered happily as he grinned with pride and took a breath, freshly composed. 

“I just love when best friends tie the knot,” Tim said more lightly as he gestured to Cameron. “And now the rings.” 

Peter took possession of both boxes but handed the larger box, the box with his ring in it, to Ellen. She would go first. She retrieved the yellow gold ring and handed the empty box to Angie behind her, before settling it just above the knuckle of Peter’s fourth left finger. His hand looked large against hers and she brushed his knuckles tenderly as she waited for Tim to instruct them both further.

“Peter Church,” Tim said. “Ellen presents you today with this ring as a symbol of your unity and your eternal love for one another. In accepting this ring, do you promise to love and cherish her, to respect and honour her, and to be at her side in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” Peter said as he looked into Ellen’s eyes, and then down at the ring as she eased it over his knuckle. Peter stared at it as she held his hand and continued to brush her thumb over his knuckles. He had not worn the ring since they tried them on in the store, it was a perfect fit, but to see it there was surreal and exciting, and then Ellen let go. It was time for Peter to turn his attention to the smaller box held in his other hand. He retrieved her own yellow gold ring, identical to his but much smaller. It felt fragile and his hand shook as he worried about dropping it into the sand. He’d had that nightmare. 

“Ellen Mackenzie,” Tim began. He smiled as Peter got that ring halfway onto her finger as quickly as he could. It was far safer there, than between his clumsy, sweaty fingertips. “Peter presents you today with this ring as a symbol of your unity and your eternal love for one another. In accepting this ring, do you promise to love and cherish him, to respect and honour him, and to be at his side in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” Ellen replied. She bit her bottom lip as Peter let out a deep breath and slid the ring onto her otherwise bare left hand. Her light blue sapphire and diamond engagement ring had been moved onto her right hand for the ceremony; she could not wait to return it to her ring finger. She was married. Those rings meant that she was married. She had to keep repeating that to herself, because it had happened so quickly, like Angie said, almost just as though it was any other day in their lives together. 

She looked up at Peter with glistening eyes and a broad smile. ‘Love you,’ she mouthed. He grinned and nodded, and he held her hands tightly once more.

“Ellen and Peter,” Tim continued. “Signed their certificate of marriage yesterday, in the presence of their friends who are here today as witnesses, Cameron and Angie. With that task complete, it is now my pleasure to pronounce you both, Ellen and Peter, as wife and husband. May your lives lived together be filled with happiness, contentment, good health…and fine wine. May you remember the promises you made here today in the presence of your close family and friends, may you cherish the memories of this occasion even on the days when it seems long ago, and may you go forward from today hand in hand, with love and peace in your hearts. You may kiss.”

Ellen stepped forward, took Peter’s face in her hands, and kissed him soundly as he wrapped his arms around her waist. She could hear a few people clapping and even a few whistles from far away as they parted only long enough for her to wrap her arms around his shoulders and hug him tightly. Eve was close and constantly moving, taking photographs of Ellen and Peter and the guests, and Ellen tried to shield her face from the camera as she wept into Peter’s neck. One of his hands was wrapped firmly around her neck and he eased her back to look her in the eyes and to check that she was all right. She started laughing as her face flushed and she nodded.

“I’m okay,” she promised. “I’m okay.” 

“Good,” he whispered. He touched her jaw tenderly with one hand before leaning forward for a steady, lingering kiss. Ellen moaned softly as Peter’s other arm supported her back and encouraged her to lean backwards. She trusted him not to drop her as she gripped his shoulders and continued the kiss. 

Cameron wolf-whistled. Eve laughed and exclaimed, “I’m going to run out of film if you two keep that up!” even though she was using a digital camera. Amy was giggling and gushing, while Angie grinned at Cameron and Danni took a step back to survey the happy picture in front of her, and the collection of sticky-beaks behind her. 

On the other side of the small group, Neil had also stepped back to conduct the same survey. He met Danni’s eyes briefly before they both looked away and he grinned. Neil loved weddings, he was glad that Danni had asked him to come even if it was under the guise of keeping an eye out for Belinda. He liked Danni a lot. This was fine.

Danni looked from Neil to the footpath and took a deep breath. She felt emotional and raw after listening to Peter and Ellen exchange those vows they had written. She could only imagine how they felt, but she felt nervous too. Skittish, edgy. She had felt that way for days. She felt physically sick just as she was equally, desperately happy.

The problem was that Danni was positive that Belinda Brady had been tipped off. Three weeks earlier they had only just decided that she was a significant person of interest, if not their chief suspect, and that decision had been based on evidence from a handful of seventeen year old girls that Belinda was not supposed to know existed – Kiera’s laptop, its added contents and her friends’ recollections – and yet as soon as they began searching for this woman, in the moments before they began searching, she vanished. She literally walked away from her desk. It was too perfect an escape.

Danni did not know where Belinda was. She did not know where Belinda’s likely accomplice was either; the man in athletic skins who had killed Kiera and tried to kill Ellen. He may or may not have been acting on Belinda’s orders, he may or may not have been acting in his own self-interest. He could still try to end Ellen’s life just as suddenly, they could both still try; they had been determined to at least raise Hell in previous months…why stop now? A wedding was not going to stop them. 

Ellen and Peter had taken every precaution for this event. There had been no public listing, there were only six guests, three of whom were armed police officers, and the exact position on the beach had not been decided until Peter arrived with Tim, Neil and Cameron, they scouted out a small area, and Peter had made the call to Danni and to Eve and Amy, to let them know where they were going to be waiting. It was effectively a very public wedding that had happened in secret, but that did not make Danni feel any better, because Ellen and Peter were living in a safe house, neither of them wanted it to be that way forever, and Danni just did not believe that their mystery man and Belinda – or D, if she preferred – had actually gone very far at all. Danni had sworn to Ellen that she would do everything she could, but time would tell.


End file.
